The Edge of Honor

by P. T. Deutermann

  The captain continued.

  “Brian, Captain Walsh wants to ask a few questions about the incident yesterday. This is just a debriefing, if you will; nothing formal, like an investigation. Okay?”

  Brian nodded. “Yes, sir.” The captain did not appear to be on edge or trying to warn him in any fashion.

  Captain Walsh looked down at his notes and then back up at Brian, fixing him with a businesslike stare. Heat, Brian thought. Definitely heat.

  “Mr. Holcomb, what was your station during the Sea Dragon incident?”

  Walsh’s voice was surprisingly high; he sounded more like a clerk than a captain, USN.

  “Sir, I was at my GQ station in Combat, which is weapons control. I stand physically between the FCSC and the EC.”

  “I am an old steam engineer, Mr. Holcomb. Haven’t spent a lot of time in CIC, and certainly not in an NTDS CIC like you have here. Could you explain what these FCSC and EC people actually do?”

  “Yes, sir. The names correspond to console positions in the NTDS system.

  FCSC assigns missile and gunfire control radars to potential air targets when directed by the SWIC; that’s ship’s weapons coordinator, SWIC.

  v&l Once a fire-control radar channel is locked on and tracking a radar target and the captain wants to shoot a missile, FCSC tells the engagement controller, that’s EC, to load the launcher with two surface-to-air missiles. Once the birds are on the rail, the EC assigns the launcher to whichever fire-control channel has the target locked up in track. The main computers watch the tactical geometry as it shapes up, and when the target enters the lethal envelope, it tells the EC to shoot. The EC then fires the missiles.”

  “And your job?”

  “Well, sir, if the NTDS system is in automatic, I don’t really have a direct console role. All the engagement commands come from SWIC via the computer network and appear as symbology orders on FCSC’s screen.

  Nobody actually has to say anything. The FCSC and the EC acknowledge and execute the orders by button actions, which are echoed back to the SWIC so he knows they’re doing what he told them to do. I’m there because I’m the Weapons officer. I’d get into it if something went wrong.”

  “Like what, exactly?”

  “Well, like if one of them performed an incorrect button action, or if there was a computer fault in missile plot, or one of the radars drops track at a critical instant … I know the missile systems well enough to order corrective actions.”

  “What kinds of people sit these consoles?”

  “FCSC has a chief; EC will have either a second chief or one of the first class petty officers from the guided missile division.”

  “And you know these fire control and launch systems better than these people do?” The staff captain’s voice held an audible note of skepticism.

  The exec looked up as if to interject something, but Brian spoke first.

  “That’s a fair question, sir. They know their individual equipments much better than I do, but I know the whole system better than most of the troops.

  The FROM chief knows his fire-control radars, and the GMM chief knows his launcher and the birds better than I will ever know them. But I’ve been trained to know the missile system as an integral part of the ship’s overall combat system. It’s more a matter of being one step back from the action, sir. There’s a hell of a lot of pressure when you’re stepping down through a launch sequence against a target that’s coming in at you at two thousand feet per second. Of course, the guys on the console know lots more than I do about how the systems are wired up and where to go to fix things, but if something goes wrong, they may not see the operational fix to the problem as fast as I will, because I’m not concentrating on button actions and I’ve had more training in that role than they have. That’s the main reason I stand there during a shoot.”

  “I see. So it’s not like a destroyer, where the gun boss stands out on the bridge with the CO and orders up each step of the engagement process.”

  “No, sir, not at all. We’re more like overseers, watching the computer systems do their thing. And if we want, we can put the system in full -auto, designate an air contact as hostile, and tell the system to take him. The master computers will assign the fire-control radar, load the launcher, assign it, and shoot it.”

  “I find that a scary concept, Lieutenant. But it must take some time to learn all this.”

  “I was a Weapons officer in my last ship, and I was sent to the Navy’s guided-missile school enroute to this ship. That was three months of concentrated study. What I’m learning now is the ship’s entire combat system, of which the missile system is one part. I’m not there yet, but I will be.” Brian though he detected the ghost of a smile on the exec’s face. Captain Huntington nodded approvingly.

  “No doubt,” said Walsh. “And on the day in question, nothing went wrong with the weapons systems?”

  “No, sir. We had the gun in shore-bombardment mode, which means that it was under the control of the gun system computer in Main Battery Plot down below, which is a separate system from the missile system. The people in the surface module established the navigation track and an initial gun-target line and sent that down to plot. The gun system computer checks were held and

  {then the gun was assigned to the computer for the shoot.

  It was standard NGFS, sir.”

  Walsh nodded and made a note in his book.

  “And what happened when Hood lost the load?”

  Walsh looked up from his notebook at Brian.”Well, sir, we all heard the blowers winding down and the guys in Combat began shutting down their gear as the power failed. It’s kind of an unmistakable sound.”

  “Oh? Do you lose the load that often?”

  Brian sensed a trap. “No, sir, it’s just a sound anyone who’s been around steamships recognizes.”

  Captain Walsh frowned. Brian wondered whether he had struck a nerve. “As an engineer,” Walsh said, “that comment should hurt my feelings. But yes, I guess it is an unmistakable sound. Now, the entire gun system failed when the power went out?”

  Brian didn’t like the connotation of the word failed. “Well, not really, sir. We stopped firing when the gun system lost electrical power. The gun system didn’t really fail, per se.” After answering, Brian felt a moment of hesitation. His answer sounded a bit sea lawyer-ish. But Captain Walsh was nodding again, as if accepting the point. He looked down at his notebook for a moment before resuming his questions.

  “Do you know why the power was lost, why the ship lost the load at such a critical moment, Mr. Holcpmb?”

  Captain Walsh stared at him again, the size of his eyes exaggerated when seen through the thick lenses of his eyeglasses.

  Brian was taken aback by the question. This is where we’ve been going with all these questions. He sensed that Captain Huntington was watching him carefully, but he kept his eyes on Walsh’s face.

  “Uh, no, sir, I don’t, not exactly. I heard—”

  “Yes, what exactly have you heard, Mr. Holcomb?” Walsh , leaning forward.

  Don’t volunteer, Brian thought. But he just had. Decision time, smart guy. He made up his mind.

  “Well, sir, I heard that the boiler casualty was caused by loss of ACC air. That the on-line ACC compressor tripped off when we were at twenty-seven knots and that they couldn’t hold it.”

  “Do you know why they couldn’t hold it, Mr. Hoi comb? Why they did not cross-connect the ACC air from one fire room to the other? The captain says you’re a Destroyer School graduate, so you’ve been instructed on steam plants; you know the ACC system can be cross connected, right?”

  “Yes, sir. But the answer is no, I don’t know why they didn’t get it cross-connected.”

  “You’ve heard nothing about an engineer being high on marijuana as the cause, Mr. Holcomb?”

  Brian tried to hold his face still, but it was difficult.

  Where the hell did that come from? Had Benedetti admitted the real cause of the incident?
Am I being set up by this guy, or worse, by the captain and the exec? Can’t be.

  “No, sir,” he said, his mouth dry. “That’s the first I’ve heard anyone say anything like that.”

  “You look surprised at what I just said, Mr. Holcomb.”

  “Yes, sir, I am. That’s a pretty serious accusation.

  … Sir.”

  “Indeed it is, Mr. Holcomb.” Captain Walsh leaned back in his chair and closed his notebook. “You see, we had a report from one of the America’s log helo crews on the day of the incident, after the Marine choppers had come up to remove Berkeley’s casualties. This man claimed that someone on Hood’s flight-deck crew told him that one of the BTs was spaced-out and turned the wrong valve when they tried to cross-connect the ACC air.

  We all recognize how suspect such rumors are, of course, but the admiral told me to pull the string. Captain Huntington here assured me that a BT made a mistake but that drugs were not involved. And you’ve heard nothing about anybody being drugged up at GQ, correct?”

  “Yes, sir. I mean, no, sir, nothing like that.”

  “So. I guess that’s all I need from you, Mr. Holcomb.

  Thank you for your cooperation.”

  “Thank you, Brian,” said the captain, indicating that he could go. The exec gave him a brief smile and a nod as he left the captain’s cabin.

  He stopped outside the captain’s door and exhaled audibly. Then he walked to his stateroom to use the head before going back up to Combat.

  He washed his face in the stainless-steel sink in his room, toweled off, and then looked at himself in the mirror. Well, well, well, he thought.

  First lie’s the toughest one. I guess you’ve decided how you’re going to play this game, Mr. Hoicomb, sir. Well shit, what else could I do?

  Blurt out that, yes indeedy, simply everybody knows that BT2 Gallagher was flying high, that the ship is loaded with dopers, and that somebody really ought to look into things here in the good ship Hood! After all, he didn’t know for a fact that any drugs were involved; he was like everybody else, going on scuttlebutt. Uuh-huh. And where’d you get your law degree?

  He shook his head as if to dislodge the mocking voice.

  As he left his stateroom and headed back up the ladder to Combat, he recalled the discussion with Benedetti the night before. I guess this makes me one of the good guys, he thought. Or at least one of the guys, whispered his conscience. Well, I may have retreated on the notion of going after the dopers the regulation way, but I will not look aside when I find it. He’d have to have that talk with the bosun, old Louie Jesus, and his division officers. I guess for now, I’ll do it the Hood way. There really was no other choice.p>

  Austin and Benedetti were up in Combat when Brian came through the door.

  Garuda was standing next to the SWIC console, his intercom wires draped over his shoulder as he did a button-smashing drill on the adjacent computer control panel. As Brian walked over to the evaluator’s table, Benedetti looked at him expectantly and Austin raised his eyebrows.

  “Well?” he said. Garuda tried to look as if he was not listening. The rest of the people in Combat all appeared to be very busy.

  “Well,” said Brian, joining the two lieutenant commanders at the evaluator table, “he had a bunch of questions about my GQ station, but what he really wanted to know was what I’d heard or knew about the cause of our dropping the load.”

  “And?” said Austin.

  “And,” he said, looking at Benedetti, “I told him that I’d heard it was an ACC air failure.”

  “He ask you anything else?” said Benedetti, stepping closer and lowering his voice.

  “Yeah, he asked if I’d heard anything about one of the snipes being high on dope when it happened. I told him no.”

  Austin looked down at the deck and smiled, nodding slowly. Benedetti did not move. “He say where he got that?”

  “He told me that a helo crewman from the America’s log helo had heard it from somebody on our flight-deck crew. Did he ask you two the same question?”

  Austin nodded. “It came up, but we both drew a blank.

  Vince here even got indignant, didn’t you, snipe?”

  But Benedetti was not in a joking mood. He gave Brian a straight look and said, “Appreciate it, shipmate.”

  Austin laughed. “Now isn’t that touching. Now I suppose the XO’s gorilla squad is going to engineer an accident of some kind for poor Gallagher.

  Let’s see, what will it be this time? I think we’re overdue for a hand injury—yes, a problem with a hatch coaming.”

  “I suppose you’d give the little fuck a commendation, tell him to keep up the good work,” growled Benedetti.

  Austin looked down his nose at the engineer, with an aloof expression, and shook his head.

  “All this goon-squad stuff, this cops and robbers, good guys and bad guys—what purpose is it serving? Do you think you’re deterring this riffraff”—he swiveled his face around Combat to indicate the enlisted men—”from doing their stupid drugs with all this hugger-mugger? No way, gentlemen, no way. Let me give you some advice, Mr. Holcomb. You find out who’s clean and who’s dirty, and you make sure the dirties aren’t in a position to put your career on the block.”

  “Easy for you to say, Austin,” snorted the engineer.

  “Your watch stations are full of senior petty officers, chiefs, and officers. Any swingin’ dick in my main holes can bring the plant down, and all of your fancy twidget stuff with it.”

  Austin arched his eyebrows. “Well, Vince, I can’t help it if you picked engineering as the horse to ride, eh?

  Should have stuck with a white-collar specialty like Ops or Weapons, or Supply. Supply’s really good for staying detached.” He made a show of looking at his watch.

  “I’ve got to get down below for dinner so I can relieve Mr. Holcomb here.” Austin gathered his notebook and cap and left Combat. Garuda looked back over his shoulder.

  “You got it, Mr. Holcomb? No changes since you left, ‘cept I had to reload the op program.”

  “Yeah, Garuda, I got it.” He looked at Benedetti, who was staring down at the deck plates.

  “Is that the end of it, then?”

  “Yeah,” replied the engineer. “No tellin’ what this guy’s saying to the CO and XO, but the staffies won’t pursue the drug angle—especially when they don’t want to pursue it. I’m sure the admiral and this staff guy know full well that it’s probably true, but they also know what can and can’t be done about it. He’s probably down there saying something brilliant, like ‘Don’t let this happen again.’ Shit. How many days is it?”

  “Days?”

  “Yeah, days. They used to keep a count on the status board, up here—yeah, there it is. See?” He pointed to one of the Plexiglas boards at the back of D and D, where a box had been drawn in yellow grease pencil and the number 179 inscribed in it. “That’s days till we get back to Dago. Actually, it’s a hundred and seventy-eight days and a wake-up.

  But who’s counting, huh? Anyway, you made the right call down there. And there’s some truth in what Austin said—you gotta know who’s dirty and who’s not.”

  “Ask the chiefs?”

  “Right. In Weapons Department, it’s your bosun and Chief Vanhorn. And see the Sheriff. You definitely need to talk to Jackson. He’s black, but he’s tough as fuckin’ nails on this subject. I’m not sure about some of your other twidget chiefs. But Fox Hudson and Jack Folsom, they’re switched in. And Garuda here.”

  Brian nodded, taking it all aboard. He looked around the darkened modules of Combat, at all the young faces bent over consoles, their skin tinted with amber scope light. His face must have shown his frustration, because Benedetti gave him a rueful smile.

  “Yeah, it’s a bitch, ain’t it? You come on here expecting to have to work your ass off learning all this technical stuff but assuming your people are your people. But that’s not how it is, shipmate. The bad guys, they know who they are, and they know w
ho the good guys are, too.

  You gonna get through this tour in one piece, you’re gonna have to play at every level. I gotta split.”

  Benedetti left Combat. Brian looked at his watch. He had forty-five minutes before Austin came back up and relieved him for the evening meal. Garuda was discussing the scheduling of tanking the BARCAP with Hoodoo.

  Brian could see Rockheart talking on his sound-powered phones to the flight deck. The captain’s phone buzzed.

  “Evaluator, sir.”

  “Tell the flight deck Captain Walsh is on his way back, Brian.”

  “Aye, aye, sir.” He hung up and passed the word over to surface. Garuda followed that up with instructions to land Hood^ own SAR helo once the logistics bird was clear of the flight deck.

  “Fucking musical helos here, Garuda,” Brian observed.

  “Yes, sir, you’re gonna come to hate fling-wings before we get done out here. Every time any other helo comes up here or anytime we want to get the Clementine bird outta the hangar for some flight ops, we gotta get Big Mother airborne and out of the way. For every hour of flight time on combat SAR station, they’ll fly ten hours doing musical helos. I hate helos. Everybody hates helos.”

  Brian found a single letter on his desk when he got down to his stateroom, a letter on tissue-weight yellow stationery smelling faintly of perfume, with Maddy’s graceful handwriting on the envelope. He pitched his ball cap onto his rack, sat down at his desk, and ripped it open. Three pages, mostly mundane news, but the closing lines were what he was looking for: “Love you and miss you very much.” No hate and discontent about the deployment. No dark hints of serious talks to come.

  A good letter. Not a great letter, but a good letter. Certainly no hint of a Dear John.

  He wondered now as he put it down why he had even felt he might get a Dear John. How had the good years at Monterey, all the fabulous times, suddenly been eclipsed in a few short weeks by his return to sea duty?

  He remembered the conversations: “I’ve got orders to a great ship, a guided missile ship, a big mother—eight thousand tons, one of the brand new PIRAZ ships. They call her a frigate, but she’s as big as a World War Two cruiser. Weapons officer. Wonderful! We’re going to deploy in six weeks for seven months.” Silence. “Well, okay, that’s not such great news for a wife who has to stay behind while the guy goes off to play Navy. But you’ve got this great offer from Bank of America, a management intern slot with great pay, the wardroom wives’ group—they’re bound to be good people on a frontline ship like this—and then we’re back for the balance of my tour.”