Time and Tide

by Thomas Fleming

  "He didn't promote nobody. I promoted myself," Cartwright said. "He must have somethin' real heavy on his mind. Maybe he got his own reasons for wantin' to get us back to the war. Maybe the goddamn diggers is threatenin' to put the whole fuckin' crew in jail."

  Cartwright's opinion of the Australians had declined steadily since he began visiting the aborigines. He shared Anna Elias's indignation and dismay at their treatment.

  Marty Roth found it hard to concentrate on the argument. Since he had persuaded Anna to join Flanagan and his friends in their cottage on Maroubra Beach, he had stopped thinking about the Jefferson City. Even when he was aboard, he was living mentally and spiritually in Anna's arms. He found it hard to believe that orders from Washington could end his time to laugh and dance and love.

  When they were alone, Cartwright got his attention. "Jew-boy," he said, clapping both his hands on Roth's shoulders, "one of these days there could be more superheated steam comin' out of that firebox than's goin' up the main line. If that happens, there's only one way to get out of here."

  He led him up to the top plates and pointed through the tangle of pipes to the mouth of a ventilator shaft. "There's a ladder in there that leads to the main deck. I'm gonna loosen the hatch up there just enough to let us get out only slightly cooked. Just remember to move your ass faster than it's ever traveled since you were born. Cause this big nigger's gonna be right behind you."

  "I haven't changed my mind about my career track. But the goddamned Navy hasn't changed its mind, either. At the rate things are going, I'm likely to be a commander for the rest of my life."

  Arthur McKay tried to listen politely to the troubles Duke Pearce was having with the Navy's encrusted prejudices. He could have said, I told you so, but Pearce would have been hurt by the dismissal. Without any special encouragement McKay could recall, Pearce seemed to have adopted him as a semi-father in matters naval.

  Pearce had been one of McKay's students at the Naval War College in 1940. A Californian who regarded Easterners as fuddy-duddies living in the last century, he had exhibited a cheerful disdain for the school and the ideas McKay and his fellow faculty members were dispensing about naval history and strategy. His attendance at McKay's lectures on the great sea battles of history was virtually nil. When McKay asked him why, Pearce had told him he saw no point in finding out what other generations had done with the weapons of their time. "Weapons are what shape tactics and strategy," he said. "We should be developing tactics for the weapons of the future, not mulling over past mistakes."

  At dinner at their house one evening, Pearce had outraged Rita and astonished everyone else at the table, which included several War College professors and fellow students, by declaiming against the standard route to promotion, which was based on how an officer performed in various commands aboard ships. Instead, the Navy should be rewarding those who had the imagination to create and produce new weapons and the new tactics and strategies that went with them. When he graduated from the War College, Pearce had applied for the Bureau of Ordnance, claiming his ambition was to be a "weapons technology manager," a term he invented for the occasion.

  Now here he sat in Arthur McKay's cabin with a shiny new weapon — something called a proximity fuse — to introduce to the war. Would he get promoted for it? The traditionalists at the Bureau of Navigation, who were reluctantly entering the twentieth century by permitting themselves to be called the Bureau of Personnel, were not impressed. Commander Pearce lacked sea duty, command experience. He could invent new weapons until doomsday. Until he got some sea duty under his belt, he was "unpromotable."

  Pearce fumed over the term. "Isn't that the damnedest thing you've ever heard, Art?"

  "No question about it."

  "When you see what this weapon we're giving you sea dogs can do, maybe you'll write a letter to Personnel, telling them what a contribution it's going to make to the fleet. It might help."

  "Sure."

  The request was pathetic evidence of how out of touch Pearce was with the real Navy. No one with good promotion antennae would ask Arthur McKay to write a letter for him. The word was undoubtedly out that he was on Cominch's shit-list.

  McKay did not have the heart to tell Pearce the truth. He reminded the captain too much of Win Kemble, with his furious haste to get to the top by using brain power and guile to outwit the Navy's slow, wary promotion system. He wanted to preach him an elegiac sermon on the futility of one man trying to change the U.S. Navy's way of doing things.

  Pearce seemed to sense the futility of his request in McKay's offhand acquiescence. His face darkened. "I'm thinking of getting out of the goddamned Navy," he said. "Really make an end run on those bastards in Personnel."

  "What do you mean?" McKay said. In time of war, the Navy did not accept resignations.

  "There's something big cooking down at Los Alamos.

  They're pulling in guys from all the services. If this proximity fuse works the way I think it will, I'm pretty sure I can get myself an ofter.”

  “Why not?" McKay said.

  Duke Pearce's world of weapons technology was too remote for serious thought. His appearance on the quarterdeck of the Jefferson City with orders to commandeer the ship to test his new weapon without delay had won Captain McKay's acquiescence for a reason Pearce could never comprehend. There was no time to waste, if the help Captain McKay had promised Win Kemble was to be effective. It had to arrive before Admiral Hepburn's report on Savo Island was on Cominch King's desk.

  That was why McKay had welcomed Pearce's orders, why he had ignored his engineering officer's warning that he was risking his ship. He was already preparing to risk his ship in a way that was at least as dangerous as the threat of her aging boilers. For a moment he was tempted to try to explain it to Duke Pearce. He felt a terrible need to explain it to someone. Would a semi-son understand? Would he be pleased to know that his wonderful new weapon would help his semi-father fight a spiritual battle as well as a real one?

  A glance told the captain how little sympathy he could expect. Pearce was much too preoccupied with his own future to worry about the moral problems of unimportant cruiser captains.

  "I'm going to do it," he said. "I'm going to get into that Los Alamos deal. I don't know what the hell they're cooking up down there, but it's big."

  Montgomery West had the wardroom in stitches, kidding Mullenoe about his collapse into husbandhood. Last night at the wedding, West had wowed the party with his reading of a heroic poem, "The Fall of Mullenoe." A joint production of a half dozen wardroom poetasters, it owed a great deal to Robert Service's "The Shooting of Dan McGrew."

  Mullenoe just grinned at him. He was still breathing pure champagne. "Wait a minute, wait a minute," he said. "Let's find out what you did for the last three weeks. Rumor has it you spent most of it in the sack with that babe you were dancing with at the bash for Bob Hope."

  Steward's Mate Willard Otis tapped West on the shoulder. "Telephone call for you, Lieutenant."

  "She's pregnant. You can't sail until you marry her," Mullenoe said.

  Who in hell was calling him at 0700? West wondered. As he picked up the telephone on the bulkhead outside the wardroom, a boatswain's pipe whined over the PA system. "Now hear this. Special sea detail report to the forcastle." They were getting under way within the hour.

  "Joey?" said a woman's voice.

  "Gwen?" he said, his knees almost buckling. She had seen the picture of him and Claire Carraway. She was calling to tell him he was a heel. "Where are you?"

  "I'm at an airport somewhere in Australia. I think it's near Sydney. I'm on a USO tour. I volunteered when I heard they were going to Australia."

  "We're sailing in an hour."

  "Oh, no. If I was a little less exhausted, I'd cry. But. I don't have the strength."

  "I don't know what I can do."

  "Well, I'm glad I at least had this chance to tell you I still love you."

  "Likewise," he groaned. "I'm sorry I can't talk. They're c
asting off the lines. Goodbye, darling."

  He hung up and slumped against the bulkhead like the victim of a firing squad. He did not know how long he sagged there. A voice returned him to reality. "Lieutenant West, are you all right?"

  It was the captain. He had just emerged from the exec's office. McKay looked grim. They were probably on their way to take on Yamamoto's Combined Fleet single-handed. That was the way West's luck was running.

  "I just heard from my fiancée. She just landed in Australia." He fumbled out the rest of the explanation.

  The captain shook his head. "That's lousy timing."

  A half hour later, the sea detail hauled in the last lines and the USS Jefferson City edged away from the dock. The crew was at quarters in dress whites. Montgomery West stood beside a restored number one turret, staring forlornly at the stiff office facades of downtown Sydney. Cheers from passing ferries, a salute from an incoming Australian destroyer drifted past him. He was numb.

  As they slowed to pass through the submarine net, the PA system coughed and growled: "Now hear this. Lieutenant Montgomery West, report to the bridge on the double."

  He obeyed, wondering if he had committed some gaffe while in his daze. Were they supposed to man the rails and he had never given his division the order? That bastard Kruger would never bother to tell him. He loved to see the movie star screw up.

  "Lieutenant West," said Captain McKay, "step into my sea cabin, will you?"

  Now he was sure he had screwed up. McKay always issued his reprimands in private. He followed the captain into the bare tiny cabin aft of the bridge.

  "Lieutenant," the captain said, "through an oversight, I've neglected to deliver a signed copy of my orders to the admiral of the port. You haven't been in the Navy long enough to know what admirals of the port are like. If you ever come across a poem on the subject by Frederick Marryat, it will give you a good idea."

  Still frowning sternly, as if it was all West's fault, the captain handed him a sealed brown envelope. "I'm afraid I'm going to have to ask you to deliver this to the old bastard. The net tender will get you back to Sydney. You can jump a PBY in two or three days and catch up to us at Noumea. Can you throw some clothes in a suitcase in about two minutes flat?"

  "Sir," Montgomery West said. "Sir, I ... I—"

  "Get going," McKay said. "You now have one minute and forty seconds."

  An hour later, Lieutenant West dialed Ina Severn's room from the lobby of the Wentworth Hotel. Imitating an Australian accent, he said, "Excuse me, Miss Severn. Do you happen to know a poem about a port admiral by someone named Marryat?"

  "Of course I do," Gwen said, her voice thick with tears. "I grew up reciting it at parties. It was my father's favorite poem. But I doubt if any American would appreciate it. It's about three British sailors' wives damning a port admiral for sending their men to sea on Christmas Day in a snowstorm."

  "There's a bloke down here in a Yank sailor's suit who says he's got a case of champagne for you if you promise to recite it for him without a stitch on. I know I shouldn't even ask an English lady such a thing, but you're in Australia now."

  "Monty?" she whispered. "Did you jump ship?"

  "No," he said. "I just happen to have a captain with a heart."

  The Deadly Fuse

  The first bomb hit about two hundred yards off the Jefferson City's starboard bow. The familiar fountain of white and blue water blossomed into the sky. The Japanese pilot pulled out of his dive and streaked for the horizon.

  It was Tuesday, January 26, 1943. They were about three hundred miles north of the New Hebrides, halfway to the Solomons. Ahead of them the new light cruiser Montpelier was blasting streams of twenty- and forty-millimeter shells and five-inch rounds into the sky. The Jefferson City's forties and twenties were also hammering away at the Rabaul Reception Committee, as the sailors called this welcome the enemy sent down from New Guinea every time a convoy headed for Guadalcanal.

  But the Jefferson City's five-inch guns were strangely silent. On the starboard wing of the bridge, Commander Duke Pearce pointed to the retreating dive bomber. "Go for that one," he said.

  Ordinarily, planes flying away from a ship were almost impossible to hit with a five-inch gun. It was too difficult to estimate the rapidly widening range and set the shells' fuses for the right distance.

  "Mullenoe," Captain McKay said. "Take the bogey at one three five."

  "Mounts one and two, execute," Air Defense Officer Mullenoe said.

  The squarish boxlike mounts swiveled, their four guns crashed. The concussion knocked the helmet off Duke Pearce's head. McKay watched the retreating Jap through his glasses. Suddenly the plane disintegrated in a burst of smoke and flame.

  "How do you like that?" Duke Pearce said.

  It was hard not to like it. It was a little harder to like Duke Pearce. From the sarcastic remarks of the junior officers, McKay gathered he was so pleased with himself and his weapon, he had set a new standard for condescension in the wardroom. Not even Lieutenant MacComber could match him. "I think you can stop worrying about air attacks from now on, Art," Pearce said.

  Inside the pilothouse, McKay heard the talker say, "More bombs coming down."

  McKay stepped into the pilothouse. For ten seconds he said nothing. With a sardonic smile, he contemplated the panic flickering in Executive Officer Daniel Boone Parker's eyes. "What are you going to do, Mr. Parker?"

  "Right full rudder," Parker said. The sweat poured down his thick red neck.

  The Jefferson City careened to port at thirty-two knots.

  "You fucking idiot," McKay said. "You didn't even look to see if the Montpelier was turning. You're in line of battle, Commander. You have cruisers ahead and astern."

  "Yes, Captain," Parker said.

  "Quartermaster, note in the log that Commander Parker made an unauthorized maneuver with the captain on the bridge. A maneuver that endangered the safety of this ship."

  "Aye, aye, Captain."

  Out on the port wing of the bridge, the supply officer, Leroy Tompkins, squinted skyward from beneath an unaccustomed steel helmet. Sweat poured down his palpitating cheeks. He was out in the open, a target for every strafing Kate or Zero, a likely candidate for acquiring a piece of shrapnel somewhere in his pudgy torso from a near miss.

  Tompkins shouted hysterically into the mouthpiece strapped to his chest. "We got one. The five-inch mounts just blew that dive bomber away. There's two more coming down. We're making evasive maneuvers. So are the other ships. The Montpelier is putting on a hell of a show for a new ship."

  "Try not to sound so scared, Lieutenant," Captain McKay said. "You're supposed to make them think we're winning this war.”

  "Yes, Captain," Tompkins said, mopping his brow. He trembled violently as two more thousand-pound bombs exploded to port.

  "Those last two bombs didn't even come close," he said.

  "Six, seven, eight torpedo planes to starboard," said the talker, who began reciting ranges and bearings.

  "Mullenoe, commence firing as soon as you select targets," McKay said.

  "Aye, aye, Captain."

  Mullenoe distributed targets to his mounts in his usual calm authoritative fashion. The five-inch guns emitted their horrendous blasts of noise and flame. One, two, three, four of the torpedo planes disintegrated when they were at least three thousand yards away. The other three, appalled at such gunnery, veered off to attack the Montpelier. The Jefferson City's forty-millimeter mounts tracked one beautifully, and he cart-wheeled into the sea, a mass of flames.

  "We got five out of the seven torpedo planes," crowed Supply Officer Tompkins.

  "Strafer bearing zero zero zero," shouted the talker.

  It was a Jap fighter plane, coming at them dead ahead.

  "Everybody down," McKay shouted.

  They dove for the deck as a hail of machine-gun bullets and twenty-millimeter shells swept down the ship. Flying lead clanged off bulkheads and the armored conning tower. Quite a lot came through the op
en windows of the bridge.

  Flat on the deck, Captain McKay heard Commander Parker's breath coming in rasping gulps. Lieutenant Tompkins got to his knees on the wing of bridge. "A Zero just strafed us. Maybe the after batteries will get him," he said.

  Tompkins peered over the splinter shield like a frightened chicken. The five-inch guns crashed. "Yeah. We got him! We got him! We're using a new shell with a proximity fuse. That means it detonates whenever it gets near a target. You don't have to worry about setting ranges. It's a fantastic weapon. It means we don't have to worry about air attacks any more."

  A stupendous blast less than fifty yards off their starboard bow belied this claim. The bomb showered the Jefferson City with water and shrapnel. "Talker, you asshole, why the fuck didn't you report bombs coming down?" screamed Parker.

  The talker was on his knees, his head against the forward bulkhead. The quartermaster pointed to blood oozing down his neck. "He's been hit, sir."

  The young sailor was dead. A fragment from one of the Jap's twenty-millimeter cannon shells had pierced his brain.

  "So this is combat," Duke Pearce said. "I like it."

  Pearce watched, apparently indifferent, while the quartermaster and the boatswain's mate of the watch carried the talker's body below. Captain McKay's dislike of Pearce redoubled. He saw the world as a series of abstract events. Combat, weapons, tactics. Human beings scarcely existed for him. Perhaps he was necessary to win a modern war. But that did not require Arthur McKay to like him.

  Was he being unfair to Pearce? Was his dislike rooted in the way Pearce reminded him of Win Kemble's flaws? Perhaps.

  The captain contemplated the fear-splotched face of his executive officer, the trembling lips of his supply officer. He had converted Tompkins into a "battlecaster" to keep the men below decks informed of what was happening. But he was only a minor target, a mouse to torture for his own amusement. The major target was not amusing.