Sweet Reason (9781590209011)

by Robert Littell

  “What-all we gonna be shootin’ at heah, Cap’n?” Partain asked. The Congressman, Lizzy Kobb, and Filmore were standing on the signal bridge peering after the helicopter, now only a flyspeck blending into the thickening coastline.

  “The target assignment, Senator —”

  “He’s not a senator yet, Captain Jones,” Lizzy Kobb said drily. The Captain had stumbled across an old joke.

  “Don’t wanna be either,” muttered Partain. “Only advantage is you don’t hafta mess with the voters so often. Ah’d as soon mess.” Partain hadn’t had a serious political opponent in his district since he won his first election in 1940. Nowadays, with fifty percent of the district payroll coming from military installations or civilian defense plants filling lucrative government contracts, he didn’t even bother to campaign anymore.

  “I beg your pardon, Congressman. No offense intended,” said Jones.

  “Don’t fret, son,” said Partain. “None taken.”

  Jones began again. “The target, Congressman, is —— ——, a small town that straddles route ten, which is one of their main thoroughfares down south. I say that so you can see how important this assignment is. According to our intelligence information, there is a truck depot at the western end of the town just beyond some thatched huts. It’s incredible, I know, but that’s how most of these Communists live, in thatched huts. Now what we’re going to do is stand off the coast about three miles and overshoot the town and then walk the spotting shots back on down till they’re smack in the middle of the depot. That way we’ll avoid the civilians — or at least most of them. When the spotter tells us we’re hitting the depot, we’ll open up with everything we have. That’s called firing for effect.”

  “Will we be able to see the target, Captain?” asked Lizzy Kobb.

  Jones shook his head. “—— —— is four miles inland, so we won’t be able to see or hear the shells land. That’s what the spotter’s for. He radios back when they land and tells us where they land. I’m afraid it’s all rather workaday dull, but it’s the kind of job you’ve got to tackle, glamour or no, to keep the pressure on the enemy.” Jones nodded to underscore the point.

  “Well, seein’ those gray barrels a-pointin’ at the shore and a-shootin’ will be excitin’ enough for me.”

  The coastline loomed larger now and features began to stand out in the landscape — a two-story blockhouse on top of a rise, a pale-green swamp at the edge of the sea, a solitary white cloud hovering like the top of a mushroom over a mangled tree.

  “Perhaps the Captain here can give us an idea of the technical end of the shoot,” said Filmore. “For example, who gets the information the spotter sends back? And who actually pulls the trigger?”

  “We’ll hear the spotter’s voice coming over a speaker on the bridge, of course,” Captain Jones explained. “But essentially his information is for Main Plot. The firing is done in Main Plot —”

  “Don’t the people in the gun mounts pull the trigger?” asked Lizzy Kobb. “I always thought the people at the guns pulled the trigger.”

  “They can, Miss Kobb, but in this instance they don’t. Generally speaking, when we see what we’re shooting at — such as the Commie patrol boat yesterday morning — we get the range and bearing to the target from the director which is right over your heads, right up there. And the director officer, that’s our Mister Wallowitch, pulls the trigger which fires all six of our five-inch guns at once in salvo. But when we don’t see the target — which is the case this afternoon — the range and bearing to the target are taken initially from a navigational chart and fed into the computer in Main Plot, which then keeps the guns pointing at the target as we move through the water. On the order to commence fire, the Main Plot officer — in this case a young seaman — pulls a remote control trigger firing the spotting rounds. When the spotting rounds are on target we open up in salvo. That’s roughly how we operate.”

  “Ah see,” said Partain.

  “Uh huh,” said Filmore.

  “We’re getting close to the coast, Captain,” said Lizzy Kobb. “What’s next on the agenda?”

  “My navigator, who is also my Executive Officer, will advise me to come right to a course paralleling the shore. He’s probably already taken the initial range and bearing to the target from the navigation chart and sent it down to Main Plot. When we come right and steady on the new course, we’ll load the guns. My gunnery officer — Mister Lustig there, the one with the headset — will tell me when the mounts are ready to shoot. And I’ll order them to commence fire.”

  “Captain, this may sound insanely naive, but how do guns shoot?” asked Lizzy Kobb.

  “I’m not sure I understand?” said Jones. “They shoot when someone pulls the trigger.”

  “No, no. What I mean is what actually happens when you pull a trigger? What makes the bullet go all that way and explode when it gets there?”

  “Captain, sir,” the XO called, sticking his head out of the pilot house. “About four minutes.” He winked at Lizzy Kobb and she winked back.

  “Right, XO. Just have the helmsman come around when you’re ready, eh?”

  Jones squinted at the coastline. “What makes guns shoot? Ever use a pressure cooker, Miss Kobb?”

  “Are you kidding? There were always stories in the newspapers about the damn things exploding.”

  “Yes, that’s it exactly. Our guns are something like pressure cookers. We put a twenty-four-pound powder case in the barrel of each gun behind the projectile, or bullet, if you will. Then we detonate the powder case with a 440-volt electric spark. The guncotton and gunpowder in the powder case disintegrate, generating a large volume of hot gas in a confined space. The gas has no place to go but straight out the barrel, and so that’s where it goes — pushing the fifty-four-pound projectile ahead of it. Something like when the pressure built up in your pressure cooker — remember, a lot of gas in a confined space — and shot off that weighted gadget on the cover into someone’s face. If we want to we can lob one of these five-inch projectiles nine and a half miles, though for accuracy’s sake we like to keep the ranges down to around eight or even less. Now when the projectile reaches the target it can detonate on contact, or it can be detonated by a preset fuse in its nose. Either way the projectile explodes — again, disintegration and hot gases pushing off, this time in all directions — showering a considerable area with shrapnel. Not very complicated, eh? Even a child can grasp the fundamentals.”

  As Jones was talking the Ebersole swung to starboard and steadied on a course parallel to the shore, which was plainly visible now.

  “Permission to load?” called Lustig.

  Jones nodded and Lustig spoke into his sound-powered headset: “Stand by.” It was the signal for the powder men to heft the powder cases onto the loading trays.

  Three miles away the swampy stretch of coast that was under water at high tide lay quiet, still, like a mirror to the sky. Beyond came the ridge. And four miles behind the ridge, out of sight of the Ebersole, the helicopter with Chief McTigue on board flew in lazy circles around the rim of the target town.

  “You know, of course,” the Captain continued, “that modern cannon are rifled. Ours have forty-five lands and forty-five grooves to the inch. The rifling, which is something like the threads of a screw, gives the projectile a right-handed spin as it leaves the barrel. Actually —”

  “Permission to open fire?” called Lustig.

  Jones, intent on finishing his sentence, ignored Lustig. “Actually, the only gun in the entire United States Navy that gives a bullet a left-handed twist is the forty-five caliber pistol.”

  “Is that right?” said Lizzy Kobb.

  “Um,” said Congressman Partain. He was learning, as he later confided to Filmore, something more about guns than he cared to know.

  “Captain sir,” called Lustig. “Request —”

  “Wait one,” Jones ordered sharply, and turned back to his guests. “The rifling is what separates our modern guns from
the old smooth-bore cannon that the navy used to use,” he went on. “Of course the quality of the powder and the fire control equipment have changed enormously. But the rifling is what really makes the difference. We give the projectile a spin as it leaves the barrel” — Jones demonstrated with a twist of his wrist — “and this is what stabilizes it in flight. Makes the trajectories more accurate and more predictable.”

  Jones suddenly remembered that Lustig was waiting for the order to open fire. “Well,” he said, “I hope that answers some of your questions. Now let’s put this show on the road, eh?” He closed his eyes for an instant and saw himself standing on the embattled quarterdeck, pressing his three-cornered hat to his head, coolly leading his man-o’-war into harm’s way. Jones opened his eyes and shook the daydream out of his head and barked: “Okay, Mister Lustig, let ’em have it.”

  “Commence fire, commence fire,” Lustig called into the sound-powered phone.

  “SHOOT, SHOOT,” Tevepaugh yelled into the squawk box.

  The dull boom of a single shot reverberated across the water as Mount 51 kicked out a spotting round. The hot brass powder canister clattered onto the deck.

  “Spotting round en route,” Lustig said into the hand telephone to McTigue in the helicopter.

  McTigue’s voice, excited and garbled, came back: “Jesus shit, you’re short — you’re … ort … you’re in … thatch … d’you read … huts … thought you … gonna overshot and walk … over.”

  “How short, dammit?” Lustig asked.

  “… are on fire … up five hund … read me over.”

  “Ah reckon you bagged somethin’, Cap’n,” said Partain. “Looka-there.”

  A thin wisp of brown-black smoke spiraled up from behind the ridge line.

  Lustig spoke into the sound-powered phone connecting him with the mounts and Main Plot. “Up five hundred and shoot again.”

  “UP FIVE HUNDRED AND SHOOT,” Tevepaugh echoed into the squawk box.

  Another hollow boom from Mount 51, another brass canister clattering around the deck.

  “… still in … fuckin’ huts,” screamed McTigue. “Burning … tinder … up … “

  “Up what?” yelled Lustig into the headset. “Say again, up what?”

  “… hundred … ver.”

  “What-all’s he sayin’?” asked Partain.

  “You’re garbled,” yelled Lustig. “Say everything twice, over.”

  “Up up … three hundred hund … d’you read me, d’you read … ver.”

  “Up three hundred and shoot again,” Lustig ordered Mount 51 and Main Plot. Another shot boomed out.

  “… on tar …” said McTigue.

  “I think we’re on target,” said Captain Jones.

  “Okay, all mounts fire for effect, fifteen rounds of VT frag per barrel, commence fire, commence fire,” said Lustig.

  “FIRE FOR EFFECT. SHOOT, SHOOT,” yelled Tevepaugh.

  All six of the Ebersole’s five-inch guns belched fire and smoke. The boom of gunfire, the hiss of recoil, the clatter of brass canisters rolling onto the deck filled the late afternoon air.

  “Skipper,” the XO called between salvos. “I think we’d better come around again. I don’t think we can get all ninety rounds off on this run. We’re too far down the track.”

  The voice of McTigue, intermittent bursts of excitement and static, came over the bridge speaker again. “Jesus shit … shooting short … huts … inferno … what … raise … deaf … up.”

  Jones began to nibble on his cuticles. “Raise your sights, Mister Lustig,” he ordered, glancing nervously at his visitors to see what kind of an impression the show was making.

  By now the Ebersole was so far past the target that Mount 51 on the bow could no longer swivel its guns far enough back to bear and stopped firing. The port barrel of Mount 52, angling back into the stops, was dangerously close to the Plexiglas windows on the open bridge.

  “You’d better cease fire on Fifty-two,” yelled the XO. “The business end of the barrel is almost —”

  He never finished the sentence.

  In the port gun of Mount 52 a 440-volt spark ignited the mercuric fulminate in the detonator which ignited the guncotton and gunpowder in the powder case which disintegrated, generating hot expanding gas which expelled the high explosive projectile from the barrel. A fraction of a second later the concussion from the shot shattered the Plexiglas on the bridge, showering the two lookouts, Lustig, the Captain, Congressman Partain, Lizzy Kobb and Filmore with glass.

  Jones picked himself up off the deck and saw the port lookout walking toward him, his face a mask of bleeding scratches.

  “Oh my God, my God, my God,” moaned Lizzy Kobb when she saw the blood on the lookout’s face.

  “What the heyell happened?” cried Congressman Partain.

  “Keep that camera going, Yancy,” yelled Filmore. “Stay down, Congressman, stay down there. Let him get you getting up. That’s it, that’s it.”

  “WE’VE BEEN HIT,” screamed Captain Jones, his jaw jerking spasmodically, his voice reaching for octaves reserved for sexual ecstacy. “WE’VE TAKEN A HIT. THE BASTARDS ARE SHOOTING AT US. RIGHT FULL RUDDER. ALL ENGINES AHEAD FLANK. TURNS FOR THIRTY KNOTS. GIVE ME EVERYTHING YOU’VE GOT. WE’VE BEEN HIT.”

  Jones bounded to the radio-telephone. “McTigue, d’you hear me, we’ve been hit, we’ve taken a hit. Do you see any counterfire?”

  But McTigue had problems of his own. “… hit in rotors … day … mayday … going … God’s sake help … help … hel …” There was a burst of static that sounded like a yelp of pain.

  “What-all can Ah do to hep?” Partain said directly into Yancy’s camera.

  “Isolated Camera, Isolated Camera, do you read me, this is Elbow Room,” Jones yelled into the handset. He was calling the aircraft carrier patrolling over the horizon. “We’ve taken a hit from shore fire. I repeat. We’ve been hit by shore fire. Request protective reaction strike. Do you read me? Over.”

  Three minutes later, wagging their wings playfully, the first jets flew over the Ebersole’s bridge toward the coastline. For the next two hours they came on, in flights of twos and fours, jets and prop planes with names like King Kong and Devil’s Advocate and Monday Morning stenciled on their noses, each with its own assortment of technological ingenuity: bombs that exploded on contact and others that waited for the village firemen to try and dislodge them, rockets with infrared homing devices, machine guns that could saturate an area the size of a football field in a single burst, napalm that could sear a strip of land and incinerate every living thing on it. The whole thing was reasonably systematic. First the planes swept the swampland at the edge of the sea. Then they worked over the ridge, leveling the two-story blockhouse and the mangled tree. After that they moved on to the rolling meadow between the ridge and —— ——, cutting football-field-wide strips across it as if they were mowing a lawn. Finally, guiding on the blazing thatched huts, the planes zeroed in on —— —— itself.

  “Ah declare,” mused Congressman Partain as he watched the performance through binoculars from the bridge of the retreating Ebersole. “If’n only the folks back home could see this, they wouldn’t say Ah been wastin’ their tax money on hardware.”

  The XO Ignores the Handwriting on the Wall

  The Executive Officer locked his cabin door, switched on the desk lamp and switched off the overhead, unbuckled his belt, dropped his trousers and jockey shorts down around his shoes and stretched out, face up, on his bunk. Lizzy Kobb stripped off her tailored fatigues, her wash-and-wear underpants and her combat boots and climbed on top, spiking herself on his member as if she were a receipt for services rendered.

  There was some confusion at first as she went one way and the ship went another, and she had to spike herself back on again. But in no time at all she got the hang of it. Matching grunt for groan, the XO and the female VIP relaxed and let the destroyer work for them. They came off in salvo when the Ebersole plunged into and out of a partic
ularly deep swell.

  “Oh God,” shrieked Kobb as she fell breathlessly against the bulkhead, where she found herself face to face with the only piece of art in the XO’s cabin — a handwritten poster that said “Make War Not Love.”

  Lizzy Kobb Takes a Survey

  Partain skipped the business about the “C” for “colored” in the phone books when he ticked off the glories of America to the Ebersole’s officers at dinner that night.

  “Y’all’re out heah defendin’ the American way-a-life: radio evangelists shoutin’ ‘Glory be to Jay-sus’ and Rural Free Delivery and plain folk rockin’ on the porch through long nights of smotherin’ heat and poundin’ rain and explodin’ thundah. Good Lord, Ah can smell the damp air full of honeysuckle and wisteria and pine needles and cicadas right heah on the Eugene —”

  “Ebersole,” prompted Filmore.

  “Eugene Ebersole,” the Congressman went on without missing a beat. “And Ah fur one feel mighty damn proud to be heah, to share this meal with y’all, to tell you that behind the strident voices of dee-sent back home theah is the low, throaty rumble of people who say: ‘God bless our fightin’ men, God bless ’em one and all.’ ”

  (“Any questions?” the Congressman asked when Lustig re-enacted the scene in his mind later. “Sir,” Lustig heard himself say, “just what is it that we-all are defending — the American way of life or the southern way of life?”)

  Sitting on the right of the Captain, Partain peered around the table as if he had misplaced something. “Ah wonder,” he said, “if Ah could trouble one of you fine gentlemen to pass ovah the Russian dressin’?”

  Before any of the Ebersole’s officers could lay a finger on the bottle of prepared dressing, the Filipino steward supplied by the Pentagon snatched it from the table and set it in front of the Congressman.

  For a long while the officers toyed with the food and forks and knives and napkins and napkin rings in silence. Except for the snacks from the pantry refrigerator they had gone without anything to eat since breakfast, but the excitement of the late afternoon fireworks had drained their appetites. True Love served coffee. The Filipino, always alert, got position on True Love and placed the cup in front of Partain.