Lieutenant Murphy looked up from her work at her desk. “Goldstein, aren’t you supposed to be at muster?” The watch officer didn’t leave her desk for anything, as far as I knew.
“Rollins is missing. Do you know where he is?”
“He stepped out to get a log reading in the engine room.”
“Thanks, ma’am!” I called over my shoulder as I ran out, heading toward the engine room.
Another heavy metal door, and—
I covered my ears against the deafening blend of engines, generators, various high-tech machinery, and a few things that ran on diesel. Generators the size of school busses roared on many sides, causing my chest to vibrate. There was no point yelling for Rollins, and if he’d been in here when the man-overboard had been announced, it was plausible that he hadn’t heard it.
The ship pitched again, and I almost lost my footing right next to an exposed metal pipe.
I hurried through the narrow walkways around and between machines, squinting for my colleague, a relative newbie to the ship along with myself. Rollins and I had gone to nuke school together, though I didn’t know him well.
Somewhere, far above the never-ending blast of noise, the intercom called time plus six, setting my teeth on edge. I had six minutes to find Rollins and get him upstairs.
The ship swung again, slamming me into a railing that knocked the breath out of me. When I’d caught my breath, I noticed that a pen had slid out from behind a generator, where I hadn’t looked yet.
And it had left a bloody trail as it went.
I dashed around the generator and gasped. Rollins was sitting up against the bulkhead, unconscious and bleeding profusely from a large laceration on his forehead. Blood had poured down his front and onto the engine log, seeping into his green camouflage uniform and all over the metal floor. I’d never seen so much blood from a wound that wasn’t in a war movie. Blood dripped off of a jagged piece of metal that stuck off the generator—he must’ve fallen and banged his head. All things considered, Chief probably wouldn’t get angry at him for being late to muster.
I steadied myself and slipped my arms under his, wrapping them around his barrel-like chest, and began to pull him toward the door. There was no time to worry about a broken neck; I had to get him to Lieutenant Murphy, who could call the medical team.
I back-stepped, slowly but surely, toward the door, making sure to not catch my uniform on anything and praying that the ship didn’t dance in the waves again. Rollins’ blood dripped down my arm and onto my hand, making my grasp slippery.
I ignored the tiny voice in the back of my mind that noted how utterly still Rollins was.
“Time plus eight!”
The announcement sounded just as I’d stepped through the door to the passageway. I repositioned my arms, then took a breath. “Lieutenant Murphy! I need you! Now!”
The petite redhead poked her head out, then shrieked. “Get him in here! I’ll call the medical team!”
I slowly walked the final few yards into the reactor control room, then laid Rollins down on the steel floor. Lieutenant Murphy, who was on the phone, tossed me her uniform’s blouse and gestured for me to put it under his head as she wrenched the intercom speaker from its cradle. “Medical emergency! Medical emergency in the reactor control room!”
Her voice echoed throughout the entire ship, immediately followed by, “Time plus nine!”
I didn’t wait for her to dismiss me. I ran at top speed back down the shadowy steel passageway, underneath the endless line of pipes and wires, past the same groups of sailors. They pointed this time. “Hey, yo, where’d the blood come from?” one asked.
I took the stairs three at a time. “Chief! I found Rollins!”
“Time plus ten!”
The hasty thuds of Chief’s boots disappearing many decks above me, and the descending boots of the medical team, let me know that all was going to be well—sort of. Rollins was obviously in a grave state, but we wouldn’t catch hell from the officers for not reporting during a man-overboard. The helicopters and search teams wouldn’t have to be deployed in a near-hurricane…for Rollins, at least. Maybe someone on the flight deck really had been blown off, and if that was the case, I hoped they were found soon.
I finished my journey to the sound of claps that immediately ceased as soon as they saw me: disheveled and covered in blood.
Torres put a hand over her mouth. “Sweet mother Mary. What happened?”
I fell back into my office chair. “From what I could tell, he hit his head. I don’t know if he’ll be okay, since that was a nasty cut.”
“Time plus eleven!”
Chief needed to hurry up and submit that muster report.
Bickley sat on the desk. “I wouldn’t worry too much. Head wounds bleed a lot, but they’re usually not that bad.” He clapped me on the shoulder. “You did good. At breakfast, everyone is going to know about the heroic nuke who saved the day during the man-overboard. Maybe you’ll even get a medal. Your parents will have to admit that a medal for valor is pretty cool.”
I picked up the book I’d been reading. “And yet, I’m still on phone watch.”
Such was life in the Navy. And besides, my parents wouldn’t care if I’d gotten a medal for rescuing the Admiral from a great white shark. The last conversation I’d had with them had hammered home their disapproval in my career choice.
My colleagues snickered, and they settled in chairs around me while we waited for Chief to return and let us go back to bed, or watch.
Torres picked up a squeeze toy shaped like a football and tossed it to Bickley. “So, who do you guys really think is the reactor ghost?”
“My money’s on Diaz,” Bickley said. “That dipstick is a big-time practical joker. I can see him moving our stuff around.”
The captain’s nasally voice came on the intercom. “Time plus twelve. All hands accounted for. The aft lookout team spotted a chem light in the water.” He sounded equally exhausted and annoyed.
We all sagged with relief. Now we just had to wait for Chief to come down and dismiss us.
“It’s not just moving stuff around, though,” Torres said. “Remember that drawing?”
There was a pregnant pause as we recalled the unexplainable incident the week before. We’d all exited the reactor classroom at the end of a training session, chatting amongst ourselves and heading up to lunch. Torres had doubled back to get her notebook, then shouted for us to “come see.”
I nodded thoughtfully. “Okay, yeah, that was weird. But a giant drawing on the whiteboard isn’t… isn’t… it’s not paranormal by itself.”
“A drawing of an F-18 suddenly appearing on the board ten seconds after we left the room is just plain fre... what was that?” She slid to her feet, her hand held up.
We hushed, looking at her for an explanation. She strode out the door, turning her head back and forth. “Hello?”
“What is it?” I asked.
“I swear to God, I just heard Rollins. But like… he was far away, but also just on the other side of the wall. Didn’t you hear him?” She studied the bulkhead, as if the chart-covered space would suddenly produce Rollins.
“What did you hear?” Bickley asked. “I didn’t hear anything.”
Torres rubbed her forehead. “I don’t even know. Just… just an impression of his voice, I guess.” She gave her head a little shake. “I’m probably hearing things because I’m so tired.”
“I hear the reactor phone ring sometimes, if I’m using the head on watch,” I said. “You’re just worried about him.” I tossed the squeeze ball to her. “You might as well stay up with me. Your watch slot begins in twenty minutes.”
“Ugh. Thanks for reminding me.” She raised her hand to throw the ball back to me, but then lowered it, her eyes narrowing as she looked toward the door. “I just heard him again. I’m positive I did.”
I sighed. “He’s probably getting stitches right now. I didn’t hear anything. It’s just the late hour, Tor.”
/> “What did he say?” Bickley asked.
Torres closed her eyes. “He said… he’s saying… ‘I’m standing right here, guys.’”
Bickley suppressed a smile. “You’ve been reading paranormal stuff again, haven’t you? I’m telling you, quit hitting the library in your downtime and start playing dominoes, like a normal sailor.”
“I like ghost stories,” Torres said, affronted. “I’m psychic, you know.”
I pinched the bridge of my nose. Not this crap again. It was one thing to say you were connected to the “beyond,” but it was just tacky to joke about Rollins. “Being able to guess that the galley is going to run out of food on any given day does not make you psychic. It means you have a good grasp of statistics.”
Bickley grinned. “Yeah, the hungrier you are, combined with the variable of whether or not you’re luckless enough to be a nuke, determines—”
“Shut up, you guys!” Torres said. “I thought you were on my side. You’re just as much into the ghost stuff as I am.” She smacked my shoulder.
I smacked her back. “Not to the point that I’m joking about saying you hear Rollins’s ghost or something.”
“I wasn’t joking! I really did!”
“Hands to yourselves, you two,” Bickley said. “It’s way too late at night for me to break up a catfight. “He held out an arm between us. “I know something that’ll make you both happy: there’s never any line at the pay phones this time of night. Since you’re awake, why don’t you both call your parents? Tell them you’re calling live from a hurricane. It always impresses the civilians. Goldstein, it’s only bedtime in Virginia, right? And Torres, you’re from around Chicago, right? I bet your dad’s up.”
Torres lightened up. “Oh, good idea!”
Our resident Navy brat was the daughter of a retired Master Chief, and she was the most complete daddy’s girl I’d ever met. Even more than me. Before this deployment, she’d cut her hair like his when he was in the service, accidentally making her look like a little boy from afar. Still, she was proud that he was proud, so we didn’t give her grief about it. Much.
Torres began to idly flip through one of the nuclear manuals from the bookshelf, but I turned away and swallowed the new lump in my throat. Before I could resume pretending to read my book, Bickley asked, “You going to call anyone tonight?” His tone carried his real meaning.
I glanced up at him, then away. “I don’t think that’s a good idea.”
His warm hand on my shoulder made me look up again, and he had the expression on his face that underlined why he’d been promoted so quickly through the nuke ranks: stern, yet understanding. “Call home, Rachel.”
I gulped and nodded. I needed to, but damn, I didn’t want to. What was there to say to the people who’d called me a selfish for joining the Navy? Hashem knew, I loved my parents more than life itself, but the wound was too deep, too raw for a mere phone call.
And I knew how the call would go. Once again, they’d recite the list of things they’d given their only child: the best schools, a private shul tutor, the most elaborate bat mitzvah Virginia Beach, Virginia had ever seen, shopping trips to New York, all of it.
“But I want adventure,” I’d hissed at them, that turbulent day on the pier, minutes before walking onto the USS Taft. “I want to see the world, serve my country, and grow up. I’m not a little girl anymore. Can’t you just be happy for me?”
And that’s when my father had spat the worst thing he’d ever said to me. The words had wrapped around me like a curse, sinking into my insides. Even there, in the reactor room, I could still feel the sting of them.
“I’m not selfish,” I whispered, the words of my novel blurring together. “I’m not.”
Bickley checked his watch. “And I know you’re not. As for me, I’ll be calling my kids, if Chief ever gets back down here. I wonder if the officers gave him trouble about being so late?”
I let out a long breath, then blinked and smiled up at Bickley. “I doubt it. More likely, he’s biting his nails up with the guys on the bridge. There’s still a jet out there. I’ve been counting them. The flight deck guys said four jets were out when the storm came up. I’ve only heard three land.”
Torres snapped the manual shut. “You couldn’t pay me enough to try to land a jet on the carrier in a storm like this. They’d be safer flying straight back to Oceana Naval Air Station. We’re in the middle of the Atlantic, right? It’s not that far.”
The sound of boots descending the stairs made us all turn toward the door. Torres poked her head out, then turned back with a relieved smile. “It’s Chief.”
Finally. “Well, good night, everyone,” I said, turning back to my desk to pick up my book. “Enjoy your phone calls. After everything, maybe we all should go vis—"
My vision was snuffed out like a candle.
END OF PREVIEW
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Mercury Page 35
