Point of Honor

by Maurice Medland

“All right, that’s it,” Doc Jones said. “I’m taking you out of here.”

  “Wait,” Blake said, shaking away the darkness. “Try it again.”

  The chief bent down and spun the engine. The batteries ground slower and slower until only the clicking of the solenoid could be heard. Blake sagged against the corpsman.

  “Come on, sir, let’s go,” Doc said.

  “If we don’t get this thing running, we aren’t going anywhere,” Blake said.

  “We ain’t going to get it running with these batteries, the chief said. “They’re shot.”

  The ship took another steep roll, and Blake knew the storm wasn’t that far behind. He could feel it in the way the ship was moving. He didn’t know when it would hit, but he knew that it would. He’d checked the barometer in the pilothouse, and it was continuing to fall. The erratic behavior of the weather was typical of the lull before a cyclone. If it caught them this way, they wouldn’t last an hour before going down. Fading fast, sick with fear and frustration, he lunged toward the generator and reached for the cutoff valve. He spun it counterclockwise and found to his amazement that it was not even halfway open. The chief had given it the standard three-and-a-half turns, but the ancient valve must have had a different ratio. He opened it all the way and fell across the control panel. He hit the start switch, and the rested batteries spun the engine with a dying surge. The engine caught and clamored to life with a deafening roar, shattering the silence in the engine room.

  “Way to go, Lieutenant!” he heard Chief Kozlewski bellow. Doc stood with his mouth open, then leaped forward to help him. He and the chief pulled him to his feet.

  “You’re going to open that wound up and bleed to death if you aren’t careful,” Doc Jones said. He held Blake up and looked at him. “I know I’m only an E-5, but now I’m going to give you some orders. You’re going back to your cabin. You’ve got to get some rest, build your blood back up.”

  “I will in a minute,” Blake said, slumping against the generator, holding his arm. “You guys fan out and see if you can see any trace of Sergeant Rivero.”

  Jones went to the left and Kozlewski went to the right, playing the beams of their flashlights around the machinery space. After a few minutes, Frank Kozlewski called out, “Here’s his helmet and there’s blood on it. In fact, it’s laying in a pool of blood. There’s drag marks. It looks like the bastard killed him and dragged him off somewhere.”

  The chief walked back over to Blake and pitched Sergeant Rivero’s helmet down. It clattered to the deck in front of him.

  Blake grimaced at the dented helmet covered with blood. He reached down and picked it up, feeling guilty for having doubted the Colombian. The metallic smell of blood mixed with the human smell of Sergeant Rivero made him retch. Christ. If a guy like Rivero was no match for this animal, what chance would the rest of them have? He rubbed his face with his hand, the rage building in him. With three men dead, their chances of getting under way were nil. Suddenly he felt unblinking eyes on him, watching him. He looked out into the dark shadows of the engine room, his eyes searching. Rage and frustration welled up inside him.

  “I know you’re out there,” he shouted. “Nice going, you stupid bastard. You may think you’ve won this round, but the joke’s on you. There’s a typhoon coming. It’ll be here in a few hours, and without engines, we all go down together. This old tub will break up and sink like a stone. I thought you were smart enough to see that, but I can see now that you’re just a stupid fucking animal!”

  Take it easy,” the chief said. He grinned. “Ain’t never heard you use such language.”

  “Sorry about that outburst.” Blake gripped his shoulder, grimacing, then shouted out into the darkness, “But this moron needs to know what he’s done.”

  “Well, it’s done now,” the chief said. “With three men dead, we ain’t going anywhere.”

  Blake tuned him out, thinking. Getting under way didn’t require a bunch of rocket scientists, just enough bodies to follow orders and enough hands to do the right thing at the right time. Only six people left, seven counting Maria. The only chance he had now of pulling it off was to press Kelly and even little Maria into service. He hated the thought of endangering a child by putting her to work in the engine room, but knew she would be in much more danger if he didn’t.

  “You give up too easy,” Blake said.

  “You gotta be realistic, Lieutenant,” the chief said. “Sparks and Alvarez and Rivero are dead. That’s three men gone. That just don’t leave enough bodies to get the job done.”

  “That leaves seven of us.”

  “Seven? How you figure that?”

  “You, me, Tobin, Robertson, Doc, Kelly, and Maria.”

  “Maria? You counting that little girl? What the hell do you think she could do in an engine room, for God’s sake?”

  “She’s a pair of hands,” Blake said. “We’ll have to use her.”

  “Come on, sir,” Doc Jones said. “You need to get some rest.”

  Kozlewski stood shaking his head, staring at Blake. “Doc’s right,” he said. “Maybe some sleep will get your head straightened out. Come on, I’ll help you.”

  “Doc can handle it,” Blake said. “I want you to stay here, Chief. Someone’s got to stand watch over the generator, keep it running.”

  “What about El Callado?”

  “He won’t bother you now that he knows why we’ve got to get under way.” Blake cupped his hand and shouted into the darkness, “Unless he’s a complete moron, unless he wants to lose the ship for his bosses, unless he wants to go down with the fucking ship!” After the words stopped echoing, he said in a more normal tone, “The guy can’t be that stupid or that bloodthirsty. Now that he understands what we’re doing, he’ll leave us alone until the storm passes. If we’re still afloat after that, it’ll be business as usual, but we’ll deal with him then.”

  “You think he heard all that?” Kozlewski said in an awed voice, glancing around.

  “He heard all right.” Blake’s eyes swept the machinery space, probing the dark shadows. “He’s right here in the room with us. Watching us. I can feel the son of a bitch, feel his eyes on me.”

  “You think he understands English?”

  “He’d better understand, or he’s as dead as we are.”

  The chief shuddered. “What you reckon he’s done with Rivero?”

  Blake shook his head, remembering the disappearing body in the vault. “I don’t know. Apparently, he likes to play games.” He glanced up at Luis Alvarez’s body, swaying with the motion of the ship. “I expect the guy in the vault and Rivero will show up in some dramatic way when it suits our deranged friend.” He leaned his arm on Doc Jones’s shoulder and nodded at Alvarez’s body. “Cut him down, Chief. I’ll send Robertson down to relieve you in a few minutes. Give him your side arm.” Blake glanced at his watch. “It’s almost two o’clock. Wake me in an hour. We’ll begin the cold-start at 0300.”

  Blake leaned heavily on Doc Jones and shuffled up to the door of his stateroom, weak and exhausted from the climb back up the ladder. Almost no food or sleep in the last twenty-four hours, combined with the shock and loss of blood from the gunshot wound had begun to take its toll. He twisted the latch and found that the door was locked from the inside.

  “What the hell?” He hammered on the door.

  “Just a minute.” He heard someone fumbling with the interior lock. The door opened, and Dana Kelly stood there with an embarrassed look. “It’s Maria,” she said. “She insists on staying here with you.”

  Blake walked in, leaning on Doc’s shoulder. “You know that’s not possible. Take her back to your room.”

  Kelly’s eyes grew wide when she saw the blood-soaked bandage around Blake’s upper arm. “Oh my God, you’re hurt. What happened?”

  Maria saw it at the same time and let out a shriek. “El Callado, El Callado.”

  “No, no. It’s all right,” Blake said. He sat down heavily in a chair, clutching his arm, nu
mb with pain, and looked at Maria. She was huddled in a corner of the room with the same gray blanket wrapped around her, trembling. “I’m sorry, honey, but you can’t stay here.”

  The girl’s soft weeping turned into sobs. She came up out of the corner and threw herself at Blake’s feet. Rising up, she laid her head in his lap, hugging his legs. Blake touched her hair awkwardly and looked up at Kelly, the irritation showing in his eyes. “Dammit, you should know better.”

  “I tried to explain it, sir, but she doesn’t understand.” Kelly moved toward them and reached down for Maria. “Come on, darling, let’s go.”

  Maria clung tighter to Blake’s legs, refusing to budge.

  Blake sighed. There was only an hour left to get some sleep before getting under way. After that, it was anyone’s guess when he would sleep again. “Okay, okay, you can stay.” It seemed ridiculous to worry about regulations when there was a good chance they’d never get off the ship alive anyway.

  The girl looked up and snuffled.

  “You’ll have to stay with her,” Blake said, glancing at Kelly.

  “The lieutenant’s been hurt,” Doc Jones said. “He needs to get some rest. How’s he going to sleep with you two chatterboxes in here?”

  “I promise we won’t make a sound,” Kelly said.

  “I’ll give the girl something to make her sleep.” Doc opened his medic kit. “Poor little kid’s about over the edge.”

  Doc went off into the bathroom to get some water for Maria, and Kelly came over and started fussing with Blake’s bandage. “What happened, sir? Was it him?”

  “Just an accident,” Blake said.

  “How bad is it?”

  Blake felt himself relax a little, moved by Kelly’s look of concern. “I’m okay,” he said.

  Doc Jones came back with a large white tablet in one hand and a plastic cup of water in the other.

  “Better make it a mild one,” Blake said. “We’re going to need all hands.”

  “Sure,” Doc said. He snapped the tablet between his thumb and two fingers and offered half to Maria. “Here you go, little one. Drink this stuff down, and you’ll feel a lot better.”

  Maria looked at Kelly. Kelly nodded her approval.

  The corpsman slung his medic kit over his shoulder and walked to the door. “I hope you can get some sleep, Lieutenant.” He glanced dubiously at Kelly and the girl. “I’ll check that dressing again before we go back down.”

  Kelly locked the door after Doc Jones and led Maria over to the inboard bed. She shook out a gray blanket, covered the girl and tucked it around her chin. She sat on the edge of the bed, smiling down on Maria, stroking her hair. Within minutes, the sedative had infiltrated the child’s slender body and she was snoring softly.

  “Flip you for the bed.” Blake nodded to the other single bed in the stateroom.

  “I can squeeze in with Maria.” Kelly shook out another blanket. “You take it.”

  Blake didn’t argue. He snapped out the light, collapsed on the bed and whistled out a long, tired breath. He laid his head back on the pillow, clutching his arm. It was throbbing now, the pain pulsing up into the side of his neck and shooting down to his elbow as the natural anesthesia produced by shock began to wear off. Doc had tried to convince him to take something for the pain on the way up from the engine room, but Blake had refused, wanting to be alert for the cold-start. He was beginning to wish he hadn’t. He heard the rustle of damp clothing squirming down between dry bedding.

  “Lieutenant?” Kelly whispered after a few minutes of silence.

  “Yes?”

  “I don’t even know your name.”

  “Daniel . . . Dan.”

  “Like Daniel in the lion’s den?”

  “Not a bad analogy.”

  “Are you married? Do you have a family?”

  Blake didn’t answer for a long time. If there had been anything good about what had happened over the last twenty-four hours, it had been that it had suppressed all memories of his last night at home with Vicki. “Not anymore.”

  “What happened?”

  “Two people going in different directions,” Blake said, his thoughts drifting back. He’d met her at Lincoln Center when he was a midshipman at Kings Point. He was standing around in the lobby during intermission, feeling out of place in his ice-cream whites, savoring a rare break from the Academy. She walked up with an impish grin and asked for an ice-cream bar. Blake didn’t know what to say until she flashed that soon-to-be-famous smile, and he knew she was kidding. She was a junior at Colombia, majoring in communications. She wanted to be the next Katie Couric, she said, but after a promising start in broadcasting, paying her dues in small regional markets, she’d given it all up for him. All he’d ever wanted was to go to sea, maybe be captain of his own ship someday. He’d always known it would never work; deep down he knew that someone like Vicki could never be satisfied with a guy from San Diego with nothing to offer except a life as a sailor’s wife, and he’d been right. They’d made it work for a few years, through sheer animal magnetism, but after she’d choked down the loneliness of uncountable six-month absences, first in the merchant fleet, and now this engineering duty, she’d decided that was not the way she wanted to spend her life. They both knew it was over, but her timing was impeccable. On his last night at home, she announced that she had taken a job as coanchor on a six o’clock news show at an ABC affiliate in New Orleans, and wouldn’t be back. She had given up all rights to Laurie, dropped her with Blake’s mother and walked out of his life, just like that.

  “Do you have any children?”

  “A girl,” Blake said. “Almost three.”

  “I’m sorry. I shouldn’t be talking to you.”

  “It’s all right. I can’t sleep anyway.

  After a pause, Kelly said, “I bet she’s cute.”

  Blake slid his wallet out of his pocket and retrieved a picture from the plastic insert. A grim smile crossed his face. She was way beyond cute, with her blond curls and sparkling blue eyes. He wondered if he’d ever see her again. He replaced the wallet in his pocket and handed the picture across to Kelly.

  Kelly groped for the picture in the near dark, touching Blake’s hand. She raised up and squinted at the picture in the dim light coming from the door of the bathroom. “She’s beautiful.” Kelly handed it back.

  Blake shoved the picture in his shirt pocket and lay back, breathing out. The pain in his arm was still throbbing, pumping blood to the wound.

  After a minute of silence, Kelly said, “We’re not going to make it out, are we?”

  “Not if I don’t get some sleep,” Blake said.

  “Sorry, sir.”

  “It’s okay.” Blake twisted in the bed, knowing he would not have another chance to sleep for a while, but sleep wouldn’t come. He heard Kelly stirring in bed. His mind flashed on the picture of her standing in the rain after Sparks had been killed, her damp shirt stretched across her breasts. She apparently wasn’t wearing anything under her dungarees then, and he wondered if she was now. He shifted in the bed and tried to blot the image from his mind.

  Outside, the wind picked up, and Blake concentrated on the long swells that were gently heaving the ship. He had timed their rate earlier. The crests were passing at four per minute, about half the normal rate. He knew from the copy of Bowditch he’d found in the chart room that this sign was one of the earliest of a tropical cyclone.

  With the gentle heaving of the ship on the long swell, he gradually drifted off into a troubled sleep, punctuated with bizarre dreams. He was being chased by a faceless creature wielding a combat knife similar to the one Sergeant Rivero carried, only much longer. He had managed to make it safely into a room and lock the door behind him, just ahead of the flashing blade. In the room stood Dana Kelly with a blanket wrapped around her, bathed in the glow of moonlight coming through the open window. A soft summer breeze gently blew the curtains inward. Beautiful, gentle music he couldn’t identify filled the air. The violent pounding on
the door was forgotten as she slowly let the blanket fall and stood before him with outstretched arms, completely, beautifully nude. The sight of her took his breath away. She looked like a goddess, smiling at him in the pale, yellow light. Blake stepped toward her, and she reached out to him, smiling broadly, her eyes shining. He took her face in his hands and moved down to kiss her. Inches away from her mouth, her face suddenly turned into the dead face of John Sparks, the mouth an open wound, filled with clotted blood. He drew back in revulsion, then the face fast-forwarded through all the mutilated faces he had seen during the last few hours, like a grisly, black-and-white film. He awoke with a violent start and sat up, gasping for air. His shirt collar, soaked with sweat, felt cold on the back of his neck.

  He rubbed his eyes and looked at his watch, wondering how long he’d been asleep: 0245. It seemed like seconds. He heard murmurs from the bed next to him and remembered that he was not alone. Kelly was mumbling in her sleep. He sat still, listening to the unintelligible sounds. She was obviously having her share of bad dreams, too. He stood up and made his way into the bathroom with the flashlight. His arm throbbed with pain. He propped the flashlight up on the sink, filled a plastic cup with water and downed it. It had a rusty taste that made him retch. He looked at his reflection in the faded mirror and noticed deep circles under his eyes.

  Startled by a scream from the stateroom, Blake rushed in and saw Kelly in the dim light, flailing her arms. Afraid she’d injure Maria, he leaned over the bed and held her arms. The child stirred but didn’t wake. Kelly heaved violently, and the blanket slipped away. Blake released her arms and covered her with the blanket as she shot upright and stared into his eyes.

  “You were having a bad dream,” Blake said.

  Kelly threw her arms around his neck. “Oh God, I’m so scared,” she said, almost whimpering. Blake gently tried to pull her arms away, but there was almost no strength in his left arm, and he was surprised at her grip. He smelled the clean, fresh scent of her hair, felt the heat of her body through her shirt as his hands left her arms and groped painfully in the air, then came to rest on her back. The warm touch of her body made his hands come alive with a tingling sensation that reached up into his chest, overshadowing the pain in his arm. Kelly responded to the touch of his hands on her back with a tighter grip around his neck. Blake tried to break the grip, tried to pull away, but the feel of her cheek against his, her warm breath on his neck, conspired to sap his strength from him.