Operation Fireball d-3

by Dan J. Marlowe

  A movement by Slater caught my eye. He had drawn a flat, pint bottle from the waistband of his fatigues. The bottle’s contents glinted amber. Slater glanced up and down the deck, then tilted the bottle quickly. He swallowed twice before recapping it and shoving it back inside his waistband.

  I sidled over to him. “That’s stupid, Slater. You want to blow the whole bit?”

  His frown drove his heavy brows into a shallow V. “Bug off,” he warned. As if to show me he meant business, he jerked the bottle out again, slipped the cap, and let half a dozen ounces gurgle down his throat. I moved closer, trying to shield him.

  “SLATER!!” It was a full-throated roar from above us in Erikson’s brass-bellow. Both our heads swiveled upward. Erikson was standing against the rail on an upper deck just below the bridge, staring down at us. He disappeared only to show up seconds later right beside us. “Give me that!” he demanded peremptorily. “And get on your feet when an officer addresses you!”

  “Stuff it!” Slater rasped. His eyes were bloodshot, and I wondered how long he’d been sucking on the bottle before I noticed him.

  Erikson grabbed for the bottle, which was partially concealed in Slater’s hand. Slater wrenched his hand away. All we needed was for the booze to smash on the deck. Then Slater’s seabag would be turned inside out, and liquor would be the least of the incriminating evidence found.

  Erikson snatched the bottle from Slater on his second lunge. He handed it to me just as the same chief who had dressed us down below appeared. “Trouble, sir?” the chief asked Erikson.

  “No trouble, Chief,” Erikson said. “Except that this man isn’t feeling well. I think he ought to go below and remain in his bunk.”

  “Yes, sir,” the CPO said blandly. “He’s one of your detachment, isn’t he, sir? If you like, I can arrange to have him admitted to sick bay.”

  Slater hadn’t seen where the bottle went. He thought Erikson still had it. While talking to the chief, Erikson had positioned himself so that his body shielded Slater from the chief’s eyes. Slater seized Erikson’s arm and spun him into the chief. “You give that back to me!” he shouted. “Goddamn it, I’ll—”

  “Watch your language when you’re speaking to an officer!” The chief’s foghorn voice drowned out Slater’s. I held my breath as I saw Slater gather himself. The chief saw it, too. “Ten-shun!” he barked.

  Slater left-hooked the chief at the beltline. The stocky CPO sank slowly to his knees. His bulging eyes expressed incredulity that a rating with as many years service as Slater presumably had could react in such a manner.

  It seemed to me that the chief’s knees no sooner hit the deck than we were surrounded by young sailors. Bursting through them came a slender officer with two stripes on his sleeve and a blue band around his upper arm with the white initials O.D. on it. “Break it up!” he ordered the sailors briskly. “Back to duty stations!” They melted away. “I’ll handle this, Commander,” the officer continued to Erikson. He raised a hand, and two burly-looking sailors appeared out of nowhere. They each took an arm of Slater and unceremoniously dragged him away. I was relieved to see that he wasn’t fighting them much. Evidently the shock of what he’d done had finally reached his liquor-fired brain.

  While Erikson was helping the chief to his feet with the assistance of the O.D., I edged to the rail and dropped the almost empty pint bottle over the side. “Either one of you can prefer charges,” the O.D. was saying crisply. “The simplest way would be for me to take a statement from Chief McMillan here and have it sent to the provost marshal at the base for further action.”

  “I’m sorry this incident occurred, Lieutenant,” Erikson apologized. “Especially since this man is in my charge. He was assigned to me only a week ago, and I didn’t realize he was so unstable. You can be sure that I’ll follow up with the proper course of action.”

  The O.D. saluted smartly and went back amidships. The chief walked away, still slightly doubled over but ignoring proffered assistance from Erikson. Chico Wilson had been hovering unobtrusively in the background, and Erikson motioned for him to join us. I had never seen Wilson look so upset. “You think it’s smart to stand out here an’ talk?” he asked.

  I had almost asked the same question myself. I felt as though a hundred pairs of unseen eyes were upon us, all disapproving.

  “It would look more odd if I didn’t speak to you after what happened,” Erikson said tightly. “You men are under my jurisdiction, and for the next five minutes anyone watching us will naturally assume I’m giving you the rules of the road regarding your future conduct aboard ship. So look alert. Pull back those shoulders.”

  We both straightened self-consciously. “What’s gonna happen to ol’ Slater now?” Wilson asked uneasily.

  “If he weren’t absolutely necessary to us, I’d let him rot in the Gitmo brig,” Erikson said angrily. “The chief gunner’s mate handles disciplinary problems on a ship this size. Those were two of his men, muscled-up ammunition handlers, probably, who lugged Slater away. They’ll throw him into the food locker, since the destroyer has no brig as such, and if he gives them a hard time, they’ll handcuff him to a stanchion.”

  Erikson looked at me. “Getting rid of that bottle really helped. If they figure Slater as blowing his stack rather than liquored up, there’s less chance his seabag will be confiscated. The Cuban uniforms aren’t in his bag, but there’s enough of an unexplainable nature to keep us answering questions for the next forty-five years.”

  “What do we do now?” I asked.

  “Slater will be confined in the food locker for the balance of this cruise,” Erikson said in the tone of a man thinking out loud. “And I don’t want either of you to try to see him. Let him sweat it out. Under normal procedure, he’ll be transferred from the ship to the Gitmo brig under armed guard. The trouble is that once he’s in custody on the base, only a military court can move him out.”

  Erikson frowned, considering. “If he’d taken a swing at me, I could elect not to press charges. The minute he laid a hand on the chief, though, he scuttled himself. What I believe I’ll do is ask the chief to let me be the accuser. I’ll agree to press charges, but if this destroyer doesn’t remain more than overnight at Gitmo, I can always change my mind and decide to drop the charges after it sails. Then I might be able to get Slater released to my custody.”

  “Goddamn that knothead,” Wilson muttered. “Four million bucks may be down the drain over a swig of rotgut whiskey.”

  “There’s one good thing that will come of this,” Erikson added. “No one will bother you two now. No ship’s personnel is going to become too chummy with a couple of sailors whose buddy clobbered their chief.”

  It turned out that Erikson was right about that.

  Wilson and I could have been a pair of rivets in a bulkhead for all the attention we received from the crew. Even at mess we sat alone at one end of a long table. It was as though we had a disease. It might have been my nerves, but the hearty meal tasted like different shapes and colors of pablum.

  All except the coffee.

  It’s true what they say about Navy coffee.

  It was the best I’d had in years.

  * * *

  We went back to the crew’s quarters after the meal and I stretched out on a bunk. Wilson took the one above mine. The compartment was dimly lighted by only a couple of bare bulbs protected by heavy-gauge wire. I had heard the crew talking about going to watch a movie on another part of the ship. There were just a couple of sailors in the sleeping quarters with us, and they paid no attention.

  I couldn’t sleep, although I felt tired. The movement of the sea had picked up after dark. The gentle rocking at sunset had increased to a constant undulation. I was trying to shake off my queasy stomach and make a serious effort at sacking out when there were footsteps on the ladder and a flashlight shined in my face. “Commander wants to see you,” the messenger announced.

  He prodded Wilson with the flashlight and roused him with the same word
s. Chico had been sleeping soundly, and he hit the steel deck sleepily. “What’s it about?” he asked.

  “How long have you swabs been out of boot camp?” the sailor sneered. “Follow me.” I remembered one of Erikson’s dictums. In the military don’t ask questions.

  We climbed the ladder with the sailor in the lead. On deck the wind hit me in the face. It was blowing hard enough to force its way down my throat. The ship’s motion was much more pronounced on deck, and I had to hold on to a handrail as I made my way along the deck behind the messenger. The wind carried to us the hissing sound of the knifelike bow of the destroyer ramming its way through the running sea. Where the moon should have been there was only an obscure light behind heavy cloud cover.

  The guide tugged open a heavy steel door and we went down a narrow passage until he stopped in front of a wooden cabin door. He knocked sharply twice. “Come in!” Erikson’s voice said.

  I was relieved to hear that it was Erikson. When the messenger said “commander,” I thought he meant the ship’s commander. Wilson and I entered the cabin. The messenger remained outside. With the cabin door closed, there was barely enough room for us to stand in front of a small desk behind which Erikson sat. “At ease, men!” he said in a strong voice. I realized that it was pitched to carry out into the passageway. If Wilson had been any more at ease, he’d have fallen over sideways. We both should have been standing at ramrod-stiff attention.

  “I’m supposed to be questioning you about the fracas on deck with Slater,” Erikson said quietly. “Making up my mind whether I want to press charges. An investigating officer has to be appointed, so if I, as a lieutenant commander, want to instigate proceedings, it will have to be a man of higher rank than if Chief McMillan puts the bee on Slater.”

  Wilson hitched a leg onto a corner of Erikson’s desk. “Don’t you think—” he began, then became aware that Erikson was glaring at the leg. Wilson slowly removed it. Erikson was playing the game for all it was worth, but after what had happened, I could hardly blame him. “It’d be good if you’re the one to gig Slater,” Wilson began over again. “That way it’ll give you a chance to drop the charges later an’ have Slater released to you.”

  “There are two problems,” Erikson answered. “First, I have to convince the chief to let me press the charges. I don’t think that will be too difficult. McMillan is burned up enough at Slater for making him look foolish in front of the crew that he wants the book thrown at him. The chief is apt to think I’m better able to lower the boom.”

  “You said there were two problems,” I mentioned.

  Erikson grimaced. “The plan would work if the destroyer were going to tie up at Gitmo only overnight. At dinner tonight, though, the skipper told me they’ll be anchored there for a week.”

  There was a short silence.

  “So?” Wilson said at last.

  “So I’m playing it by ear.”

  I don’t know how much sleep Wilson got the balance of the night in the narrow bunk of the rolling, pitching destroyer, but I didn’t get much.

  CHAPTER TEN

  We disembarked at Guantanamo in the dark and in a driving rainstorm. The lights of the base were almost obliterated in the sheets of tropical rain. “They don’t get too much rain here as a rule,” Erikson observed before we left the destroyer. “The hills usually divert even the hurricanes.”

  “Just our luck to catch a good one,” Wilson groused.

  The transient barracks chief was unhappy to see us. Grumbling, he slipped on his poncho and led us to a two-story temporary building. From his remarks we learned that he had been up before during the night bedding down a load of replacements who had made it to the base in a four-engine Navy transport from Parris Island just before the bad weather closed down the airfield.

  “Grab any unoccupied bunk,” the chief told us. “And fall in with the replacements in the A.M. when they’re called to chow.”

  He went off and left us. From where we stood inside the entrance, I could see forty-odd sailors and marines sacked in while they awaited assignment to permanent quarters. “Let’s try the second deck,” Wilson suggested. “Might be less traffic.” When we climbed the stairs, we found out it was true. We staked out a corner at the far end of the building to avoid as much contact as possible.

  Erikson had told us to get some rest because it would be late afternoon before he could get back to us. I slept most of the morning, skipping breakfast when the mess call came. After lunch the time really dragged. Wilson pulled out a deck of cards and we played gin rummy for a quarter a game. Chico had no card sense and lost consistently. Then he began to cheat flagrantly with no improvement in his results. I called off the game finally.

  When four o’clock arrived with no sign of Erikson, I began to get edgy. Outside, the storm was worse. Thick, low-hanging clouds pressed close to the ground and all but blotted out the rocky hills. The constant drumming of the rain on the roof just above our heads was getting to me. By five o’clock I could see lights burning all over the base through the rain-streaked windows.

  Wilson had just laid down on his bunk when a raucous voice thundered up the stair well. “All you swabbies up there on the second deck — fall out for work detail! Report down here in fatigues and ponchos in two minutes! On the double!”

  “We’d better go,” Wilson said after momentary indecision. He rolled off the bunk. “If that joker checks and finds us here, we’d have to answer too many questions.”

  “But how will Erikson find us?”

  Wilson shrugged. “You’re in the Navy now,” he said with a fine edge of sarcasm in his voice.

  I followed him, since I could see no way to avoid it. We reached the lower floor while a loud-voiced Marine sergeant was forming the transients into a ragged line stretching down the barracks aisle. We fell in at the far end. “Get aboard the trucks outside!” the sergeant shouted. “You’ll be taken to Warehouse number seven to load sandbags. File out and load. MOVE!”

  “Somethin’ must’ve busted loose,” Wilson observed. The ranks ahead of us began to bottleneck at the door as the first departures flinched in the face of the storm. The sergeant’s bull voice got them moving again. A surging mass of rain-slicked backs went up over the tail gates of the tarpaulined 6x6 trucks as if prodded by hot irons. The headlights of an approaching pickup spotlighted the red-faced sergeant just as Wilson and I ran out into the salt-seasoned rain.

  “These two belong to me, Sergeant!” Erikson’s welcome voice boomed from the pickup. The Marine took in the visor-peaked cap with rain protector beneath which could be seen the commissioned officer’s insignia. He saluted and turned to the trucks. Wilson and I started to pile into the pickup. “Go back and get your gear,” Erikson instructed us. “And step on it.”

  We were back in minutes. Erikson drove while Wilson and I dripped water on the floor of the cab beside him. It was crowded because we had taken the seabags inside with us to keep them out of the rain. “Isn’t this weather a blinder?” Wilson asked.

  “It could be a break for us,” Erikson answered. “Or it could have been if that fool Slater hadn’t fouled up.” He scowled. “I liberated this pickup from the motor pool and picked up our crates from the holding warehouse. They’re in the back. I’d have been along sooner, but I stopped off at the combat intelligence center to check out the current defense and security situation. We don’t want to be poking around the perimeter in the dark completely out of touch as to installations.”

  The metronomic slap-slap of the windshield wipers punctuated his words. “The whole station is on hurricane alert, which means everyone’s going to be too busy to pay much attention to us. From the way this thing is making up, I’d say it won’t be long before everyone is hanging onto something solid to keep from being blown away.”

  “It’s a hurricane?” Wilson asked.

  “Not yet. I checked at the met office. Wind is now up to force seven and predicted for force nine. That would mean gusts up to seventy miles an hour. It’s
a good time for us to move out.”

  “But what about Slater?”

  “We’re going after him now. Drake, this is going to be your bag. Whatever it takes to do it, we’ve got to get Slater out.” I opened my seabag, took out my.38, and stuffed it into my waistband beneath my poncho. Erikson saw the movement. “I don’t want anyone killed!” he said sharply.

  That didn’t jibe very well with the remark about whatever it took to get Slater out, but I didn’t say anything. Erikson slowed the truck to a crawl near a low, T-shaped building on our right. It sat in the center of a circular plot of ground outlined by a curving road that surrounded it like a moat. “That’s the brig?” I asked.

  “That’s it.”

  “Drive around it.” Erikson circled the drive. The front portion of the building was wooden frame structure and the el in back was concrete block. Barred and wire-mesh-covered windows marked it as the cell block. The building was a tin can. I doubted that there were even reinforcing rods in the cinder block. “Not even a fence,” I said.

  “Superfluous,” Erikson replied. “The base has two fences around it with a well-guarded area in between. Castro provides another guarded area beyond that. No prisoner is going anywhere.”

  “I’ve seen all I need to out here. How about the inside?”

  “Play it straight from my cues when we go in,” Erikson said.

  He parked the pickup and led the way in. There were three people in the outer office, a Marine corporal with a holstered.45 at his side, a buxom, auburn-haired Wave in a blue uniform, and a three-chevroned sergeant behind a desk with a nameplate saying SERGEANT OF THE GUARD.

  “You three are the only ones on duty?” Erikson asked.

  “Yes, sir,” the sergeant answered after springing to his feet at sight of Erikson’s insignia. “Plus Corporal Gates on cell duty inside.”

  “I’m Commander Erikson. You’re holding a man named Slater on charges?”

  The sergeant glanced at the Wave who had the crossed quills of a yeoman embroidered on her sleeve. Her young face had a wide mouth. She was smirking at Wilson who was staring boldly at her well-filled tunic. She had overlapping incisors, which gave her a minx-like look. She realized belatedly that the sergeant was looking in her direction. “Yes, sir,” she said hurriedly. “We do.”