The Gulf

by David Poyer

  Gordon moved his seabag to a dry patch of deck. He straightened and nodded.

  “Got your orders?”

  He nodded again and bent, began digging them out.

  “You don’t talk much, do you? Where’s the rest of your boys?”

  “They’ll be along,” said Gordon. He refused Kearn’s offer of a cigar and handed over his orders. The officer took them inside. Gordon watched the slow drift of drizzle past the hull of a landing ship, the creeping progress of a roach coach down the pier like a funeral cortege.

  Kearn came out. In the short time he’d been below, his face had darkened. He said, “What is this? What is this bullshit?”

  “What bullshit is that, sir?”

  “This R bullshit, Chief!”

  “Senior Chief, Lieutenant. That’s us. USNR.”

  “We got no time for weekend warriors. We’re expectin’ an explosive ordnance disposal team. See, we’re leaving for the Persian Gulf tomorrow.”

  “That’s us,” said Gordon again. He prodded the seabag with the toe of his combat boot. “We’re going with you. You got a man can give me a hand with this?”

  “How many you got coming?”

  “Four more.”

  “All reserves?”

  Gordon nodded. Kearn stared at him for a moment, his watery eyes narrowed in what looked very much like hate, then said, “You wait here. I better see Honey ’bout this one.”

  Burgee and Everett came aboard while he was below. Gordon had them stow their bags in the dry and stand easy. Finally, the lieutenant came back. “Come on,” he grunted. “We’ll talk to the captain about this.”

  The interior of the little ship made Gordon think of flogging, Fletcher Christian, and Horatio Hornblower. The decks were caulked oak, the bulkheads varnished plywood, the ladder steps teak with rope handholds. He had to bow to each door. Everything was undersized and the air was rank with varnish, diesel fuel, insecticide, and a mildewy smell he couldn’t identify. Kern rapped at a cherry-stained door marked CAPTAIN E. HUNNICUTT, then went in without waiting.

  “C’mon in,” said a balding lieutenant commander perhaps twenty years younger than Kearn. He stood up so they could close the door. “Hey, Senior Chief, how y’doing. Sapper here tells me y’all are reserves, that right?”

  “That’s right, Captain.”

  During the ensuing pause, Gordon watched both Kearn and Hunnicutt examine the chest of his khakis, reading the devices and ribbons. Like most of his men, he wore only the top three, in this case the Purple Heart, Bronze Star, and Combat Action.

  “What you do for a livin’, Chief?” said the captain at last.

  “Dairy farmer, sir. Vermont.”

  “Uh-huh. And your other divers … how about them?”

  “One’s a high school teacher, one of ’em’s an electrical contractor, one’s a paramedic, and there’s a fella who runs a bank.”

  He caught Hunnicutt’s glance at Kearn; the lieutenant’s rolled eyes. The commander cleared his throat. “Well, now, don’t get me wrong, but I suspect somebody’s fouled up here, Senior. We’re going into a hot area, we need up-to-speed people. Now, I’m goin’ to call Mine Warfare Command, and—”

  “I say something, sir?” said Gordon, looking around. At last, he saw a whittled hat peg and hung his cover from it.

  “We’re waiting,” said Kearn.

  “I’ve got twenty years in, ten of it active duty, and I’m a qualified master blaster and dive supervisor. We’re all first-class divers, senior EOD techs, and jump-qualified. We pull two weeks a year active duty in Gitmo or New London. Together we got sixty years of experience and we just finished the mine-warfare update at Fort Story. You call Commodore Steadley, he’ll tell you we’re as good or better than any regular team’s been there so far.”

  Hunnicutt glanced at Kearn again. “That’s all very well, but this isn’t going to be a pleasure cruise, Senior. For one thing, it’s going to take a heap of sweat and Geritol even getting these old MSOs across the pond.”

  “I understand that, sir.”

  “Then think about this: about what your, ah, teachers and bankers are going to be doing once we get to the Gulf. Mine-sweeping’s changed. We don’t just cut moorings and detonate ’em with gunfire anymore. You’re going to be getting in the water with them, figuring them out, disarming or blowing them up on the spot. You really think you’re ready for that?”

  “Yessir,” said Gordon.

  Hunnicutt looked skeptical. Kearn leaned forward and murmured something. The captain nodded. “Take your gear below,” he said to Gordon. “I’ll make a couple calls, check it out, let you know.”

  “Sir, I got a truck coming today.”

  “I’ll let you know,” said Hunnicutt again.

  * * *

  Gordon decided to leave it at that. He followed Kearn down low, narrow passages to the chiefs’ quarters. It had the same airless darkness he was beginning to associate with minesweepers. His locker was doll-size, a pine drawer beneath his bunk, but he managed to get his personal gear in it. He’d learned to travel light in Vietnam. That meant two sets of khakis, three green utilities, and a set of whites. Throw in underwear, razor, towel, and a couple of copies of Vermont Life and he had a seabag and a B-4.

  He learned his way around the ship that afternoon, getting his orders stamped, drawing linens, turning in his personal firearm to the gunner’s mate, and seeing the corpsman for his medical check-in. At 1600, he got his men together around a tiny table in the mess room.

  His team, or detachment, had four divers, aside from himself as team leader: Burgee, Everett, Terger, and Maudit. He knew them all from active duty together and weekend drills diving in Lake Champlain. They were older than the average Regular diver. But he knew they were in shape—the tests and swims assured that—and they had far more experience and, in his opinion, intelligence, too, than any twenty-four-year-old. So he started by saying, “You fellas all get a place to sleep?”

  “You can call it that,” said Terger. A barrelly, graying man with glasses, he taught high school chemistry and made perfumes on the side. The others nodded. “Down in forward berthing. Dark, and the air ain’t real good. Actually, it’s a lot like a coffin. But officially it is a bunk.”

  “Clint?”

  Burgee, the electrician, had large tattooed biceps and a blond mustache that pushed regulations. He shrugged.

  “Lem?”

  Lem Everett was the oldest man in the team, forty-two, and managed a branch bank in Burlington. He was bent and reserved and wrote poetry; he had four daughters and had won a Navy Cross aboard the Mayaguez. Now he pushed back hair that was retreating on its own and said, “John, are you sure this thing’s safe? It’s an antique. The engineman chief told me two months ago they took off for a week’s cruise up to New York. One engine gave out as soon as they passed Fort Sumter. Then the loran went, and finally the gyro. They hit fog off New Jersey and they were lost. They waved a fisherman over to ask where they were and managed to hit him and sink the guy. They never got to New York, but it took them two weeks to get back. Now they’re going to cross the Atlantic?”

  Maudit muttered something in his Vermont French.

  “You might be right,” said Gordon. “But that’s not our problem. Our problem is to get our gear aboard and stowed, get under way tomorrow, and get ourselves up to speed to deal with mines.”

  “We’re up to speed, John. Didn’t we just blow their minds at school?”

  “We have a lot more to learn, Clint. And a lot more work to do on the way over.” He looked at Etienne Maudit, the paramedic. “Tony, you’re checked in? Medical, bunk, pay, orders?”

  “D’ac, Chief. By the way, I may be working with the medical department some of the time, if it goes well with you.”

  “As long as our training and maintenance gets done first.”

  “Scuse me. There a frogman chief here?” A seaman with red paint on his nose was hanging in the hatchway. Gordon lifted his chin. “Got some shit
on the pier for you.”

  “That’s our gear.”

  “Let’s go.”

  A green five-ton was backed up by the brow. Gordon asked the quarterdeck watch to call away a working party, then headed over the swaying gangplank to the concrete. He was in the truck, counting boxes and checking them against the driver’s manifest, when he heard his name being called by an angry voice. He looked over the gate into Kearn’s narrow, reddened eyes. “Hey! Did you call away a working party?”

  “Yessir, we got diving gear here to get aboard.”

  “You load your own gear.”

  “I only got four men, sir—”

  “You load your own fucking gear,” said Kearn again. “My people are busy.” He turned and went back up the brow. Gordon looked past him, to where his det stood in greens and T-shirts. They looked old beside the seamen and petty officers who stood around on the afterdeck.

  Gordon consulted with the driver and the Marine escort and got the truck backed a little closer to the brow. The gate came down, his men moved into position, and boxes, crates, and gear began scraping out over it. He checked them off the invoice as they went by him to a growing stack on the fantail. Heavy green and blue tanks of gas—helium and oxygen, five sets of Mark 16 semiclosed-circuit diving gear, four canisters of chemicals, six sets of twin scuba tanks and regulators, crated personal diving gear. A safe, three wooden crates of shaped charges and satchel charges, a Bowers portable air compressor, four black bags containing inflatable boats, and two silenced 25-horse Evinrude motors. Lifting balloons, boxes of publications and tools, crates of wire and hose. Midway through the offload, the petty officer of the watch came down and told Maudit that they had to get their gear off the deck; Lieutenant Kearn wanted to lay out some sweep cable. Gordon sighed and sent two men up to pass it below to the tiny space that had served up till now as a luggage room and was now the dive locker.

  * * *

  Well after taps, when at last everything was inventoried, stowed, and secured, he went ashore. On the pier, the lights were a grim sodium yellow and steam hissed up in lazy, writhing clouds. A needle gun clattered like distant harassing fire, some late-night working party; aside from that and the ever-present sibilance of steam, the waterfront was quiet. The sound, the smells, the humidity brought back Saigon harbor. He stepped carefully over power cables and water lines. A row of lambent yellow and red rectangles at the head of the pier marked the phones and vending machines. The concrete was littered with spent butts and candy wrappers. Sailors in dungarees slumped or curled into the support of the receivers, murmuring cajoling love words or forcing the bland cheerfulness nineteen-year-olds use to their idiot parents. He waited for a free one and tapped in numbers.

  “John? That you?”

  “It’s me, Ola. You asleep?”

  “I was in bed.”

  She sounded sleepy and at the same time distant. He asked her how she was, and then the boy, and then the herd.

  “It’s not been easy, John.” Two more milkers had mastitis and production was down. The machines were hard to handle and Stacey and Suzanne wouldn’t let down for her. “I think they know you’re gone,” Ola said.

  He wanted to ask about cleaning, had she disinfected the milk house every day, but then he thought, You know she did. So he only said, “Look, if you need a hand with the herd, call Lew Drexel. His boy’s lookin’ for work this summer.”

  “What are we going to pay him with, John? Have you sent me anything yet?”

  “Ain’t got anything yet.”

  “Well, I’m doing the best I can here. I’m working fourteen hours a day, keeping things up and cooking, too. I haven’t been out to the kiln since you left. The boy’s workin’ hard nights after school.”

  “How’s he taking it?”

  “I’m not real sure, John.”

  He couldn’t think of anything else to say except, “Well, hard work never hurt a boy.”

  “How is it there? Where are you, anyway?”

  “South Carolina. Oh, good enough.”

  “Are you getting enough to eat?”

  “Yup. But I miss that maple bread you make.”

  “I thought you were going overseas.”

  “We are.”

  “When are you leaving?”

  “Tomorrow,” he said. “It’ll take us three or four weeks to get across, I figure. No phone. No mail. So you may not hear from me for a while.”

  She didn’t answer for a time. And all she said then was “All right.”

  He said goodnight, waited for a response, and at last hung up. Stared toward the little ship. A curtain of steam came up and hung in the air, glowing with yellow light.

  Under way tomorrow, he thought. He didn’t know what they’d find on the other side. Their instructors didn’t, either. The reports from the Gulf were contradictory. They’d lost one team already and no one knew why: only a sudden explosion, then mute drifting bits of wet suit and flesh. The technicians and engineers wanted him to send reports on what he found, what types of mines and fusing mechanisms, and what worked on them. And by elimination, by silence, what didn’t.

  He didn’t like the way Ola sounded … she was tired, sure … that was all it was. She was tired.

  He wiped his feet again, unthinking, as he stepped off the gangplank. Then he squared his shoulders, and snapped off a salute.

  8

  U.S.S. Turner Van Zandt

  STANDING on the flight deck, melting in the fireproof flight suit and fifteen-pound survival vest, Chunky Schweinberg dragged a glove across his face. His mouth felt wooden.

  He hadn’t expected to fly today. Or, he told himself now, I’d of kept it in the green in the Londoner. He’d felt numb at breakfast, but now he was at that stage of a hangover where it hurts when your heart beats. And the slow roll of the flight deck didn’t help a bit.

  But Woolton had given them the first twelve-hour shift under way, and now the new captain wanted to see them strut their stuff. Well, Claude R. Schweinberg had never said “I can’t” in his life. Never in three years of high school ball, never in three with the Seminoles. You didn’t play a lot when you were number three behind Paul McGowan. But he’d done all right—thirty-eight tackles and two blocked punts in three seasons. Till that deadly day when Bobby Bowden had called him into his office and shut the door.

  He farted sadly and squinted into the sun. It burned furiously down at him through the dust and murk of the Gulf. He wished he’d drunk another Coke. No, that just made you want to pee. One goddamned thing after another … “Okay, Buck,” he muttered. “Let’s get this over with.”

  Hayes was sweating, too. Along with the Nomex suit, vest, and gloves, he was wearing thirty-eight pounds of body armor. Now he shifted his gum to his right cheek and his helmet to his left hand, and flipped open the blue NATOPS checklist. He ran his eye down the preflight, trying to ignore his headache. It was centerlined between his eyes, like an ax blade pressing outward. “Chocks,” he mumbled.

  “Forget that flight school stuff, Bucky-boy. I’ll take right side and meet you on top.”

  Hayes agreed dully and the two pilots started at the nose, checking the main rotor blades, windshield, wipers, and air-temperature gauge. Schweinberg found an oil smear and called for the chief. Mattocks shouted to a mech.

  Van Zandt shuddered under them, accelerating. The men on the flight deck leaned without noticing the heel. Wind rattled the plastic-coated pages in Hayes’s hand. He squeezed his eyes shut for a second. Red video games played behind his retinas, but the headache backed off a bit. TACAN, ESM, data link. He yanked on a stubby antenna. It seemed to be firmly attached.

  They moved slowly along. Hover lights, radar housing. Hayes peered into the pitot tubes to make sure they were clear, then leaned into the cockpit to check harness, mirrors, flight controls, and pressure gauges. A tire gave a dull thud as his flight boot impacted it.

  Hoisting himself heavily by footholds in the fuselage, Schweinberg perched himself on the aircraf
t’s back. It seemed awful high off the deck. A lot of water around them, all right.… He popped the cover on the hydraulics bay. Fluid levels, access covers, servos, flight controls, transmissions. He inspected the rotor-drive system carefully for forgotten tools or parts. Chief Mattocks strolled around below with his arms folded, looking out at the horizon and whistling soundlessly through his teeth.

  Chunky held tight to a rotor while he wiped his face again. He’d found nothing. Not that he’d expected to, but it was his neck. He closed the access panels and banged them to make sure they were secure before he climbed down. Standing on the deck, he felt dizzy for just a moment.

  Finally it went away and he continued aft. An SH-60 had 117 items to check in the preflight and Schweinberg, as he always did, made himself concentrate for every one. The most minor thing, like a loosely fastened cowling, could trick-fuck you in the air.

  They met at the tail cone and agreed that the exterior looked okay. Chunky, having a previous deployment under his belt, was the HAC, or aircraft commander, and without speaking, he headed for the pilot’s seat, on the right.

  Hayes went around to the port side. The Navy called its H-60 copilots ATOs, airborne tactical officers. He settled into the sheepskin-covered bucket, inhaling the mingled smells of paint, fuel, hot plastic, and lubricants. His pulse accelerated as he brought up external power and the cockpit came to life. He buckled the seat belt and shoulder harness and cinched them tight, adjusted the seat for his long legs. He pulled the helmet on last. He hated the issue lids. They were hot, heavy, bulky, and flew off your head if you hit something.

  But then, he thought with a sudden touch of depression, there were a lot of things not to like about flying for Uncle Sam. In some ways, it was just a job, and a dirty, hard, and not-very-well-paid one at that.

  Whereas a civilian engineer …

  Thinking vaguely about the job offer, he plugged in and adjusted the mike. Within the plane, since ambient noise was so loud, the crew communicated through an intercom system. The ICS was voice-actuated. If he wanted to radio the ship, he tapped a foot switch or pressed a trigger on the cyclic. Beside him, Schweinberg was checking the shear wires on the windows. Neither the pilots nor the crew wore parachutes. No one bailed out of a helicopter. “Pilot, ATO,” Hayes said into the mike.