The Med

by David Poyer

  The depression in the bunk that had taken Lenson’s weight was already gone. He was halfway back to the radios, the charts, and the short angry man who paced impatiently high above the sea.

  U.S.S. AULT, DD-698

  Ten miles ahead of the flagship, a huge-bellied man in khaki trousers and grease-smeared T-shirt thrust himself through a hatchway and into a tiny compartment. Elbowing away a knot of equally dirty sailors, he aimed his face upward toward a mass of gears, shafts, and cables that came through the overhead and continued down through the deck.

  “Where’s the flashlight, Steurnagel? You think I’m a friggin’ owl?”

  One of the sailors hastened to thrust a light at him. The big man flicked it to one side to examine a handwheel and brake assembly, then forward, into the very bow, to the chain tube. The anchor chain itself filled the locker beneath their feet, fathoms of rusty tumbled links each five inches across and twenty pounds in weight. Then he aimed it upward, to the massive mechanism that fed it onto the forecastle, to the ground tackle. He stared for a long moment, then turned so quickly that the three other men in the closet-sized space flattened themselves against rusty steel. “Polock!” he bawled aft, through the hatch. “Mason! Lay back to the gear locker. Biggest prybar you can find, two lifting hooks—six-inchers—and a hundred feet of twenty-one thread. Smee!”

  “Yeah, Chief.”

  “Operator’s station, up on the fo’c’sle. Tell whoever’s on it to cut power to the windlass—don’t ease out, don’t haul in, just stand easy. Move!” Men turned instantly, pelting aft and upward, boots echoing from steel amid machinery crowded so close they had to turn sideways even as they ran. “Stewie! Haul ass up to the bridge. Find that new ensign. Or Mr. Jay, or the XO if you see them first. Tell them Chief Wronowicz has a jammed shift mechanism on the—no, better keep it simple. Just say a casualty on the anchor windlass.”

  When the first class, too, was gone the large man sighed. He reached up to touch the gritty, half-greased surface of a cam, and his teeth showed under a half-growth of dark beard. Behind him, unseen by him, the two sailors who were left exchanged apprehensive looks.

  “Blaney,” he muttered.

  “Chief?”

  “I want BLANEY! Get that slack-wristed scumcock down here on the double!” His roar echoed around the compartment, and the men crouched as if a steam line was about to break. He had his mouth open again when a sudden humming came from the windlass motor, beside him, and he jerked his hand free and danced back with the lightness of a squirrel.

  “Watch it, Chief.”

  “I’ll have ’em shut down, Chief,” said one of the men, and he, too, disappeared. Wronowicz, rubbing one of his massive, greasy hands with the other, glowered at the jammed mechanism, then glanced up and around him.

  The Ault’s wartime designer had built her forepeak for thin midgets. Gear lockers and paint lockers and ground tackle had been crammed into the sharp stem of the old destroyer. The bulkheads and overhead were lined with cableruns and piping; the deck was slippery with oil. This far forward, the engines’ whining roar was deadened to a rumble, but the vibration of the seas as the bow shattered them a few feet ahead made the confined air tremble around the waiting men. The stinks of grease, rust, paint thinner, and the powerful smell of Wronowicz himself mingled in a miasma of confusion and disaster.

  The humming died. The sailors dispatched aft came running back, swearing as they tripped over knee-knockers, hanks of heaving line, cans of red lead. Immediately the chief set them to work. As one hastily connected a sound-powered telephone, two others braced themselves around the windlass mechanism and began to maneuver the pry, a tapered nine-foot iron bar, into place with its sharp end under the jammed assembly. Wronowicz, meanwhile, had been looking around. He found a wooden block and wedged it tightly under the bar, against the winch housing. As he stepped back he bumped into someone behind him, and barked, “Jesus, get your ass out of here! Wronowicz don’t need a goddamn audience of thousands when he’s working.”

  “Chief?”

  The voice was hesitant. His head still turned away from it, the big man’s face altered; then he turned, moving an inch or so to give the other room.

  “Ensign Callin,” he said, his voice flat.

  “One of the men said you were having some trouble down here,” said the officer. He was husky too, though nowhere near the size of the chief; he was clean-shaven, with a truculent look, though his voice had none of the confidence of his build and expression. No more than twenty-one, he wore a set of gleaming, oversized gold bars, and his new khakis were creased and clean. “What’s the, uh, problem?”

  “Brace yourselves against the roll,” said the chief, looking at the waiting men, two of them hanging on the lever end of the pry, the others standing ready with wrenches. One, looking scared, was holding a hammer he had taken out of his belt. “Got a jammed anchor winch, sir,” he said to Callin. “This motor here turns the wildcat through these gears. This handwheel shifts between the wildcat and the capstan. The lower part of it here engages up into these notches. There’s a lot of slop in ’em now and this pawl here, see, didn’t engage right. Plus I think that handbrake assembly’s hosed too. The way the wildcat—”

  “The capstan, you mean?”

  “No, sir. Line goes on the capstan, chain goes on the wildcat. Anyway, it’s jammed tight as an Irishman in a Hong Kong whore. Stewie, is she dead now? Breaker open?”

  “Main deck says yes, Chief. They didn’t understand before. They were trying to rock it out.”

  “‘Rock it out.’ I’ll rock that asshole’s … see if they have the stopper on.”

  “Says it’s on.”

  “Fuckin’ well better be. All right, let’s put some Swedish steam on that bar.”

  “Chief,” said the ensign quietly, “what are you doing up here? Isn’t this first division’s space?”

  “Those fuckin’ deck apes can’t find their butts in the dark with both hands, sir. If somebody don’t get this jam cleared we can kiss off standing in close this morning.” He motioned to the bar. “Okay, girls. Hop to it.”

  Two men heaved at the pry. It moved slightly under their weight, then stopped. The pawl moved a bit, then slid back between the notches.

  “Ask them topside if they’ve got the brake on.”

  “Yes they do, Chief,” said the man with the phones.

  “We need some slack. Who’s on the control?”

  “That new guy—what’s his name, the black kid—”

  “Take him off. Get the petty officer on the switch. Tell him I want her backed off about three inches. Just that much. You two, get away from that pry.”

  “Chief,” said the ensign again, “how long—”

  “Look, Ensign, I can’t tell how long it’s going to take to fix until I fix it. This always happens when the goddamn BMs gundeck their maintenance. Sometimes it takes coupla minutes, once it took a day. I had to unbolt the axle frame and take it all apart. You better get out of the way, sir, there’s likely to be a lot of grease and shit flyin’ around in here.”

  Callin’s face closed even more. He set his lips, then moved back. “Go on, then, Chief. If it doesn’t work in a couple of minutes—”

  “Yeah, good, sir.” The motor hummed again, and the chain rattled and scraped in the hawsepipe. The humming stopped. “The other way,” said Wronowicz, watching it. “A cunt-hair will do it.” The motor reversed itself. The gears made a grinding noise, making them all start, and then reversed too.

  “Hands to it, now,” said the chief, drawing a massive forearm across his mouth. Black grease smeared his beard. “Heave!”

  Again the men set themselves against the rolling ship. Again the bar gave for the first inch or two and then set solid, wedged tight, giving not at all. The sailors strained, their necks rigid, muscles bunched, sweat starting on their faces. Nothing moved.

  “Chief,” said the man at the sound-powered phones, “they got a problem with the steering engine aft. Can�
��t tell if it’s controls, or what.”

  “Call an electrician, tell them.”

  “Say they did. He don’t know what’s wrong with it, he says.”

  “Jesus H. Christ,” bawled Wronowicz to the universe. He stared at the sailors; they had slacked off, unable to put their full strengths to the bar for long, but afraid to take their hands from it so long as he was watching. His massive shoulders slumped, but it was a slump of exasperation, not of defeat. Not yet.

  “Get off that bar,” he said to them.

  “Chief—don’t you think a block and tackle, get some multiplication of force on it—?”

  “Yes sir, Mister Callin. Multiplication of force. Lots of room down here for that. Just let me make love to her once first.”

  The sailors moved apart silently, and Wronowicz put his shoulder to the bar. He tested it, waggling the end to be sure the pointed shaft was deep inside the mechanism, just where it refused its greasy union, and braced his grease-spackled boots.

  The bar suddenly sank into the fleshy part of his arm, just above an old tattoo. Wronowicz grunted deep in his chest and shifted his legs to one side, so that he leaned forward, into the ship, the bar coming out of his shoulder and into the guts of the winch. Slowly, he began to straighten. The bar bent, arched, the iron set as stubbornly as the massive back that bent into it, that humped in swelling muscle under the filthy T-shirt, dark with sudden sweat between the wide shoulder blades.

  “Chief—”

  He grunted again, mindlessly. His eyes, turned from the others, were squeezed closed. His lips drew back, showing dental gold and decaying teeth, and his breath hissed out between them.

  Callin bent through the hatchway, his face dark. “Chief! Leave it,” he muttered. “Let the boatswain’s mates do it. Go back to the engineroom. We need you there.”

  “… Can do it.”

  “Get aft!”

  The sailors exchanged looks. That had been an order. But not a muscle of the chief’s body cahnged, only to lean harder, harder, into the rigid metal, as if will alone could force matter to yield.

  “… Coming!” he grunted.

  With a grating sound, the bar stirred. The chief relaxed slightly, took a new hold, then levered his whole weight upward and then down on the quivering hilt. The bar bent slowly, and the mechanism rasped and moved slightly and then suddenly gave a bang like a pistol going off. The ensign jumped.

  Wronowicz stepped back, sweating mightily, and the iron fell with a clang. “Hand me that light,” he panted. “Yeah … there. It’s in. Steurnagel, finish her up. Grease this fucker good; that’s prob’ly what caused the jam. And get all this crap out of the locker before you secure, or it’ll lop some poor fucker’s head off next time we drop.” He turned, and his eyes met Callin’s for a long moment.

  “You say there’s more trouble back aft, sir?”

  When they had left, the big man a pace behind the one in khaki, one of the sailors wento down on a knee to pick up the iron. An inch and a half thick, it had bent near the end of the shaft through an angle of thirty degrees. The men looked after the two figures. “God damn,” whispered one of them.

  “Pretty good,” said one of the others; then added, in a low voice that nevertheless carried clearly to every man who stood there, his hands dangling by his side:

  “—for a old man.”

  U.S.S. SPEIGEL GROVE LSD-12

  Ten thousand yards astern of the Guam, deep in the belly of a squat old ship, a private first class named givens sat nodding in the midst of a score of other marines, hunched like fetuses in the dim red light, jammed together like subway passengers at rush hour.

  Wherefore, as by one man sin entered into the world, and death by sin; and so death passed upon all men, for that all have sinned.…

  The operating handle of a machine gun dug into his left side, the curve of a mortar baseplate into his right. The shelf he sat on was steel; the low overhead, also of metal, crisscrossed with insulation and swaying with lifejackets, pressed down to the crown of his lowered helmet. Strapped to him, wired to him, part of him, he wore the issue pack, haversack, blanket roll, two canteens that sloshed with the roll of the ship, a pistol belt and sidearm, first-aid kit, gas mask, and poncho. Two canisters protruded above his pack, and he carried a third under his arm. They held mortar shells. His polished black boots were planted solid and motionless on the gritty floor of the amtrac. His face was expressionless except for tension at the corners of thin, tightly closed lips. His bony scarred hands rested on the oiled barrel of the 81mm mortar that he carried clamped between his legs.

  Will Givens, age eighteen, swayed motionless, his eyes closed. On one side of him a corporal named Cutford snuffled in his sleep. On the other Sergeant Silkworth, the mortar team squad leader, whispered mad obscenities to himself, polishing his battalion-famous profanities. The closed interior of the amphibious tank stank of diesel oil and old vomit. The twenty marines had been sealed there without movement for two hours now.

  Nodding there, half-asleep himself, Givens dreamed his way back into the morning.

  Fourth platoon had had reveille passed on them at four that morning by the gunny. Will had rolled out faster than usual, knowing this was the day. He’d been pulling on his second pair of socks when Corporal Cutford leaned out of the blinking light of the overhead, his face blank and light-less as the inside of a mortar tube, and said:

  “Fuckhead. You.”

  “What you want, Corporal?”

  “You, Oreo. Shit detail.”

  “I had it yesterday, Cutford. And the day before.”

  “And you got it again, Oreo. Dee-dee into that head. You hear me? Haul ass, fuckhead! We hittin’ a beach today. No time waitin’ breakfast for shit-eatin’ prives.”

  He finished dressing, enough for the detail at least, his worn soft trousers bloused into unlaced boots, skivvy shirt from the day before. In the head he bent to draw water into a scrub bucket amid the Niagara roar of urinating marines, then pulled swab and disinfectant from the cleaning locker. The solution rushed over the terrazzo, chasing into rusty dark corners under the thrones, islanding the men as they squatted. He swabbed away grimly, ignoring curses and threats. Today no one lingered; the head emptied as quickly as it had filled. Givens lifted the swab, swirled it to separate the gray strands, slapped it down to the deck, drew it along in swift parallel lines, taking up the gray water. Under it the terrazzo came clean, white base and green and red and blue flecks of color showing sharp and clear in the sour ammonia tang.

  “Will. I’ll finish up.”

  Givens looked up. The marine lingered uncertainly in the hatchway, his face white as porcelain. Pimples showed where his uniform collar rubbed, and though he was no older than Givens his skivvy shirt showed a line of blond-fuzzed gut above his belt.

  “Cutford told me to do it.”

  “He did? Naw, I’m on the list for today. He’s just on your case again, man.”

  “Yeah … all right, Washout. Thanks.” He straightened, passed over the swab, and went out to the bunkroom to pick up his blouse.

  The chow line was short; two cooks in ketchup-stained “Spiegel’s Eagles” T-shirts were ladling out the last scraps of sausage and dry toast. Givens got the last egg and slid into a seat with some infantrymen. They glanced at him without welcome, but kept eating. The upcoming operation was making everyone silent, and they were all tired; the heavy seas of the past few days took a lot of energy from men cooped belowdecks, stewed in the same sweaty air, heat, damp, and boredom.…

  He came back from memory to reality, to now, at a sudden snarl from the amtrac’s engine. The marines stirred as the starter whined again and then the diesel, not ten feet from any of them, burst into clattering life. A dim blue light came on over Cutford’s head, like an infernal halo, and the corporal leaned forward. Sweat glistened on his skin, and against the hair at his open blouse Will Givens caught a twisted gleam of gold. He leaned too, tensing, to look forward to where the A-driver crouched in his
turret.

  The gears meshed with a bang and the ’track began to roll. Its treads clawed at the steel deck, jolting over tie-downs, sending every slam and lurch straight up their backbones. Givens wedged himself into the seat, tightening his hands on the mortar. Low and heavy, the amphibious tanks floated with only a couple of feet of freeboard. Sometimes, he remembered, when they hit the water they didn’t float at all. The men locked inside didn’t have much of a chance then.

  Any minute now …

  Twenty-five tons of steel and men launched itself into the sea. He felt a moment of falling, then heard the clatter of the diesel change timbre, become a heavier mutter. The exhaust burbled like a drowning giant behind them. Received, then yielded up again reluctantly by the sea, they leaned with a slow waterlogged roll. Givens stared across the aisle at Washman—“Washout”—and the white boy stared back at him, his face sober. They looked at each other for several seconds and then Washman managed a scared wink. Givens smiled slowly and then winked back.

  The amtrac began to turn. The big ’tracks, efficient and fast for something of their weight on land, were underpowered and logy in the water. He felt his body grow light, and then crash down. They were in open sea, on their way to the beach. A single ray of sun came shooting back from the A-driver’s viewport. With the twenty other captives he stared at it as it danced along, briefly gilding the pronged barrel of the machine gun, swaying to Silky’s bulging crotch, Harner’s vacant grin, the tops of Cutford’s white socks, Givens’ long fingers splayed over the spiral threads of the tube, and then fled out of their dark compartment as the track turned once again. He steadied the mortar with his knees and reached up to wipe his forehead. His hand came away dripping and he used his sleeve next. His mouth began to water. He slipped off his helmet and pulled from the liner the candy sack he had saved against this ride.

  At the sound of his retching the other marines groaned. The lifejackets danced in close gloom as the track corkscrewed. The seas grew steeper as they closed the beach, bottlenecked by the rising bottom, and the ’track soared and plunged and rolled. The air stank of diesel fumes. Givens had started it, but most of the troops were sick now, using utility caps, paper bags, shirt pockets, anything to keep it off the deck of the amtrac. They had swabbed it up too many times before. Only Silkworth and Cutford leaned back against the vibrating steel, the squad leader watching with a smile of disdain, the lance corporal with an expression that could be either contempt or hatred.