The Gulf

by David Poyer

  “We’re Navy,” said Hayes. “Pilots.”

  “Yeah? Zat so?” He tipped back an oil-company cap to show a gray crew cut. Crow’s feet were engraved deep around aviator’s eyes. He had a cigar in his mouth and there was a scar on his neck, as if he’d been beheaded, then clumsily repaired. “Peeps Richards, ARAMCO Air Service. Put in twelve years in the Marines. Started at Chu Li, flyin’ H-34s, and then 46s.”

  Schweinberg belched. “Did you hear why the Marine crossed the road?”

  After a moment, Richards said, “What’s that?”

  “’Cause his dick was in the chicken.”

  “Shut up, Schweinberg,” said Hayes, annoyed. Sometimes his roommate’s no-class act was out of place. “I apologize for him, Colonel.”

  Richards studied Schweinberg for a moment, then turned to Buck. “Oh, I ain’t got no rank anymore, been out for years. I’m a civilian now. Flyin’ resupply, Northwest Dome.”

  “What’re you pushing?”

  “Jet Rangers. How about you?”

  “SH-60s.”

  “Is that right? I never been in one a them yet. Hear they’re candy-ass fly-by-wire airplanes.”

  “Can we buy you a drink?” asked Hayes.

  “Oh, you don’t want to buy for me. You’re payin’ ten a pop for those Guinnesses. Tell you what, bring your glasses over, I got some jungle juice in my flight bag.”

  It turned out to be Glenlivet, two fifths carefully swaddled in Richards’s underwear. The sight unbent Schweinberg’s attitude considerably. “Don’t get me wrong,” he said, looking into the pouchy eyes, “I never refuse gas, but we don’t want to drink up that kind of liquor.”

  “Oh, don’t worry about that.” Peeps’s crow’s-feet deepened. “Least I can do for you boys, out here defending me and all. Empty those glasses. Let’s see what kind of men the Navy’s turning out these days.”

  They drank steadily as the windows turned black. Richards didn’t need much urging to talk. He was well liquored already and he told them several stories about flying in the Gulf, about Lester and Larry and the whale shark, and about life in the expat community. After a few shots, Hayes asked him how much he made, and he modestly admitted to seventy-five.

  “Are you ever sorry you got out?”

  “I have my moments.”

  Before Hayes could ask what Peeps meant, Schweinberg wanted to know how he’d picked up the scar.

  “Oh, that. A recon team got in trouble out near Quang Tri. Let’s see, this was sixty-nine.

  “They was surrounded by VC and asked us real nice if we could do a night extraction. So the squadron CO said we’d try. He took the lead bird and two of us volunteered to go in with him.

  “Well, the ground fire was so heavy you could hang your flak jacket on it. My heart was jumpin’ around like a mouse in a paper bag, but we followed him in. All three choppers took ground fire. My pilot caught a burst in the chest just as a B-40 exploded in the engine. We had fire lights all over the cockpit, and I could hear my gunner screaming, just before he jumped. He’d always said he’d jump before he’d burn.

  “Anyway, I tried to autorotate but I misjudged the collective and used up all my turns fifty feet up. Next thing I knew, I was neck-deep in night honey and rice shoots, surrounded by guys shoutin’ in Vietnamese and firing AK-47s.”

  “Wasn’t you armed?”

  “Just the thirty-eight. Still got it, too.” Richards nudged his pocket, slopping prime single malt. “Always been my philosophy, if they’re gonna get you anyway, take some of the fuckers along. But there was no sense drawin’ attention. So I just wiggled down there between the turds and played dead all night. It was tough, ’cause it opened me up like a smoked mullet, going through the windscreen.

  “But I don’t want to do all the talkin’ here—you need a refill there, Chuckie?”

  “Chunky. Yeah, thanks.”

  Schweinberg told a story that Hayes had heard about six times before. He’d been flying SAR when the Air Force hit Tripoli. He described how the horizon lit up as the F-111s bolted by beneath him, three hundred feet off the water. Then Buck told one: not a war story, but about the time Admiral Augenblick hoisted his flag on the Deyo and three planes had been scrambled to get oatmeal for his breakfast. Then the landing lights crapped out on the destroyer and they’d had to do bombing runs with the canisters of Quaker Oats.

  The bottle gurgled and Peeps switched instantly to reserve. “So, what you guys doing up here?”

  “Convoyin’,” said Schweinberg thickly.

  “Them Iranians are getting to be a pain in the ass.” Richards gazed into his glass, then granted it a quick death. “Fact, I got thumped by two of ’em a couple a weeks back.”

  “Thumped?” said Hayes.

  “There’s two F-14s out of Bushehr do a patrol down the demarcation line. Well, I was dropping off a rock-guesser in East Thirty-four when they come out of the sun.” He illustrated with his hands. “I wasn’t psyched to go evasive just then. They come down in a dive like bats outta hell and then broke, one left, one right. Jet wash was like hittin’ a wall in the sky.”

  He paused to top off. “You want to watch out for those guys. I think they know us in the commercial choppers. But they might figure you for enemy.… Chuckie, you ready? Shit, you don’t do so bad for swabbies.”

  “Take it easy, Claude,” said Hayes. He’d lost track of how many, but Schweinberg was staying neck and neck with the old guy.

  The Floridian waved him off. “Hit me,” he said thickly, waving the mug. “Fill that fucker to a hundred percent. We’re gonna be at sea for a long, long time.”

  * * *

  Richards left when the scotch gave out, but Schweinberg wanted more beer. They stayed till there was no one playing darts, no one left at all. At last, the manager threw them out. “Airway, breathing, circulation,” mumbled Hayes as they staggered forth. Schweinberg’s arm was over his shoulder and his Nike Airs squeaked as they dragged. Outside, the dark was very dark and the quiet was very quiet. The night was cool and the parking lot was empty.

  Buck Hayes slowly became aware of a total lack of yellow Land Rovers with one-handed ex-thieves in them. “Fo-ock,” he mumbled. He sat down on the curb. The night looked as if it had been taken apart and put back together wrong. He had to hold a steady left rudder to keep it out of a spin. He’d partied hearty before with Schweinberg, but now he realized they’d made a mistake trying to keep up with the old Marine. Also they were miles from the pier, and the only thing moving on the whole street was a dog, far off, eating something off the pavement.

  He got up suddenly, staggered a few steps off, and stood bent, waiting miserably for the inevitable.

  Chunky Schweinberg was feeling no such anxiety. When Hayes had let go, he’d buckled slowly at the knees, muttering, “Death—but first, cheech.” Now he lay face down, examining a cigarette butt up close.

  He was remembering the double-wide he’d grown up in. Shep and Blackie and Bull Head out in the yard. His mother, sitting in the car with white gloves on, looking at him and his father with that hopeless expression on her face. He was suddenly conscious of a tremendous sadness. “I used to have a ferret,” he mumbled.

  “Say what?”

  “A ferret … got him when he was little, raised him by hand … I really liked that fuckin’ ferret.”

  “What was his name?” asked Hayes. Claude saw Buck’s face in the streetlight and thought with sudden piercing insight, No wonder they call ’em shines.

  “Oh, we called him Shit. ‘Here, Shit.’ ‘Have you fed Shit yet, Claude?’ my mom use to say.” His lips were smiling against the concrete, but unshed tears were dissolving his heart. He saw the russet and cream muzzle nuzzling the earth, heard his dad’s shovel grating … his mom was gone then.… He’d really loved that fucking Shit, goddamn him, why did the fucking dogs have to get him? It seemed like everything you loved passed like that, and he would eat dirt too someday.…

  The black nugget went away again. Chunky
listened to him tossing his grits for a long time. At last, heavy breathing rasped above him, and then a loose-lipped mumble. “What?” he muttered.

  “Quit playin’ speedbump, Chunky. We got to get back to the ship.”

  “Jus’ cool it, Buckwheat.”

  “What’d you say?”

  “Huh?”

  “What’d you call me, Schweinberg?”

  “Bucky. Thass your name, ain’t it?”

  “I thought I heard somethin’ else.” Hayes stared at him, then reached down. “Come on.”

  Dragging the senior lieutenant down the empty median, Buck Hayes felt mingled fear and hilarity. It hadn’t seemed funny while he was spraying cookies, but now it was so horrible he wanted to laugh. Then he thought, If somebody comes out of these alleys, it ain’t going to be funny at all. He couldn’t fight, and he couldn’t abandon Schweinberg, either.

  “Hey, there’s a car.”

  “It’s not a taxi, though.”

  “I don’t care what it is, flag it.”

  “Maybe it’s cops.”

  “Do they got cops here? I ain’t seen any yet. I hope it is a cop.”

  “Don’t say that.” Hayes shivered, remembering the old man’s stump. He didn’t even want to know the penalty for public drunkenness in Bahrain.

  The lights drew closer. The pilots separated, each taking a lane. When the car stopped, Schweinberg, fumbling at his wallet, weaved around to the driver’s side.

  There were two tiny people in the Honda, a middle-aged couple. There were suitcases in the back seat. They looked pleased at being stopped in the middle of the night. They smiled up as Schweinberg breathed his predicament into their faces. When he was done, the woman said something to her husband. Then they all four just smiled at one another. “Jeez, she’s pretty,” said Chunky. “What are they, Japanese? Andrea, forgive me, I’m in love.”

  Hayes said doubtfully, “Do you think they have the faintest idea who we are?”

  “Do you understand me?” said Schweinberg to her, raising his voice. “American military, need to get back to ship?”

  The woman bobbed her head, and after a moment the man did, too.

  “See? They understand.”

  “Will you give us a ride?”

  “There, she’s nodding.”

  “What a smile.”

  “What nice teeth.”

  “But how we going to tell them where to go?”

  “We can’t,” said Schweinberg. He opened the door and motioned her out. Laughing in low, nervous voices, the Japanese looked around the empty street. Then they bowed. Schweinberg bowed back, steadying himself on the hood. This seemed to reassure them, and they got in back with the suitcases.

  “You better let me drive.”

  “No, I got it.” Schweinberg seized the wheel with an expression of great concentration. He mashed the gas experimentally and the engine tried to chew its way out of the hood. There were whispers in back. Hayes beamed them his best shit-eater. “Don’t worry, we’re U.S. Navy,” he said. “We really appresh, appre, well, this is sure great of you. Won’t take us long, just down to Salman.”

  “Hey, Bucky.”

  “Yeah?”

  “How do we get back to the ship?”

  “Christ! Claude, don’t you know?”

  “Course I do. Lemme think. Lessee … lessee…” He craned upward through the windshield. “Aw right, Big Dipper’s on duty! Keep it in the back window and we ought to get there.”

  “Oh, Christ,” said Hayes again.

  They went east till the water glimmered. Hayes picked up a radio tower he recognized and they steered for that. They were almost on the causeway to Sitra Island before they realized it. At Hayes’s shout, Schweinberg jerked the wheel, too suddenly, and they hit the median and went airborne. The car sailed over the dry ground between lanes for what seemed like a long time, then hit with a rattling jolt that snapped their heads into the dash.

  “Down and locked!” howled Schweinberg. “You still there, man?”

  “Still here, you still there?”

  “ATO, get me a fucking fix!”

  There was an excited babble from the back seat. They ignored it. “Home plate dead ahead, range one mile,” said Hayes.

  They slowed for the gate guard, holding up I.D.s. When they were clear, Schweinberg accelerated again. Warehouses loomed ahead. They plunged between them into a hardstand of palleted cargo, racing down a twenty-foot-wide lane at fifty miles an hour. There was muffled whimpering from the rear now.

  Looking out the right window, Hayes saw a head. This seemed odd and he blinked and tried to focus. Yep, a yellow hard hat was moving along with them on the far side of a long stack of oil drums. “Hey,” he said. “Look over there.”

  “I can’t. I’m driving,” said Schweinberg. His lower lip was between his teeth and he was staring straight ahead.

  “There’s a guy over there.”

  “Is that so? He’s workin’ late.”

  “Uh-huh.” Hayes closed his eyes for a moment. When he opened them again, the head was in the same relative position, but it was larger. This was interesting. When another aircraft did that, it meant you were on a collision course. “Wonder ’f he sees us,” he muttered.

  “What?”

  “I said, wonder—”

  They came to an intersection and the forklift, with the man Hayes had been watching on top of it, came out of the side aisle with the forks three feet off the pavement. Metal screamed as it tore, and Schweinberg shouted, “Shit! That sonofabitch almost hit us!”

  Hayes felt wind on his feet. He looked down to see the roadway going by. “Uh, hey, he did. Hey, uh … do you see that water ahead?”

  “Huh?”

  “God damn it, Schweinberg, stop!”

  The brakes worked great. There were thuds and cries from the back seat. The pilots unfolded themselves clumsily. Hayes took all the money he had left and leaned back inside. The Japanese were staring fixedly forward, no longer smiling. “Uh, thank you,” he mumbled thickly. “We’re sorry about the car. Is it a rental car? I hope so. Send us the bill if it’s more than this, aw right? Thank the nice people, Chunk Style.”

  “Th’ y’,” mumbled Schweinberg. He let go of the door tentatively, grabbing handfuls of air to stay erect. Behind him, the door slammed. The Honda’s little engine tapped, and torn sheet metal squeaked against the rear tire as it moved off.

  They stumbled down the pier. Hayes felt as if the air had been let out of his legs. Schweinberg didn’t feel anything, no more than if he were floating toward the ship on a whiskey cloud. At last the brow slanted ahead. Grimly, like mountain climbers assaulting the summit, they hauled themselves toward the quarterdeck.

  Hayes glanced around, ready for Lenson to jump out from the shadows, but there was only a sleepy, pissed-off-looking enlisted man. “Hope you officers had a good time ashore,” he said.

  “We had a great time,” roared Schweinberg, groping forward toward the hatchway. But Hayes stood still for a moment, peering into a sudden, yawning blackness. The hangar. In the dimness he could make out the folded tail boom, the looming mass of 421.

  The liberty, the snatched hour of freedom, was over. Suddenly he was aware that his shirt was soaked with sweat, that he stank of beer and vomit. He was getting too old for this. He had a family now. A family he ought to be with more, provide for better.…

  Not knowing why, he stepped into the waiting maw. It eclipsed the distant twinkle of Manama, swallowed it in a gulf of absolute blackness. Not as if the light had never been at all, but the blacker black of a final end, of what had once been but now no longer was.

  He was staring into it still when a jingle came from behind him. The faint metal kiss of pocketed keys. He turned, and made out a figure between him and the stars. “What are you doing in there?” came a sharp voice.

  “Just looking at the plane. Who’re you?”

  “Duty officer. Who are you?”

  “Lieutenan’ Hayes. Hi, Terry.�
��

  The voice came closer. “Virgil? You all right?”

  “Had a couple drinks … just going below.”

  “You sure you’re all right?”

  “Yeah. Yeah, I’m fine.”

  “Well, okay. Take care of yourself, brother.”

  He swallowed. “Will do,” he said thickly. “You, too, brother.”

  He felt the light slap of a hand on his own, and made out, in the faint light from outside, the dark, somber eyes of Van Zandt’s weapons officer.

  Schweinberg’s holler, deep in the ship: “Bucky! You comin’?”

  “Comin’, Chunky,” he said. Turning, he staggered forward, after his friend.

  II

  THE CONVOY

  6

  U.S.S. Turner Van Zandt

  DAN leaned over the chart table, squinting into the morning sun as it fired a warning shot of heat across the flats of the Khawr al Qualay’ah and through the windows of the bridge. Senior Chief McQueen, the assistant navigator, was correcting their courses out for the tidal current. Around them was the usual morning yawning and chatter, but today it was muted, expectant, like an audience before a premiere.

  It was always like that, the first time under way with a new skipper in charge.

  Captain Shaker strolled in from the wing, lighting a Camel as the harbor pilot explained the channel out. Lieutenant Terry Pensker, the combat systems officer and at the moment the officer of the deck, was talking on the intercom, finishing up the underway checkoff. Dan shoved away from the chart table, catching the captain’s eye.

  He wanted to stay visible, ready to take over if the skipper decided on prudence over valor. Perrys were single-screw ships, harder to maneuver in close quarters than older destroyer classes. Today their situation would challenge any ship-handler: starboard side to, with a northerly wind setting them on the pier. And a tanker behind them and a waste barge tied up forward left no room for learning on the job.

  The Bahraini was saying, “The tug will make up to you forward, Captain, so if you want to—”