trying to be charming, but somehow it wasn’t coming off well. He seemed
ruffled by her challenging approach toward Tombstone.
“Sorry, we can’t. We’ll need to get back to our hotel. In fact, if we
can arrange it, it would probably be easiest if we could conduct most of
our interviews with the commander in Bangkok instead of out here.
Possibly at our hotel?”
“As you wish. How long will you need him?”
“Oh, two or three sessions will be enough. I imagine we could fit him
in for an hour or two these next few evenings.”
Tombstone groaned to himself. “May I remind the admiral,” he said,
picking with care the words he could use in front of the press, “that
I’ve been assigned to temporary duty ashore.”
“I don’t think that will be a problem, Stoney. We can find someone to
take your place. ‘Full cooperation,” remember?”
It appeared that there would be no escape.
Twenty minutes later he was leading Pamela and her crew through the
twisting bowels of Jefferson, taking them down the island deck by deck
until they were in the maze of passageways beneath the flight deck. The
experience of walking down one of Jefferson’s long interior corridors
never failed to amaze a first-time visitor. The passageways ran
straight for hundreds of feet; every thirty feet or so they were
interrupted by a cross frame with an oval-shaped door called a
“knee-knocker” because they forced a tall person to simultaneously stoop
and step high to go through. Watching someone approach down a
passageway was like watching one’s own reflection in an endlessly
reflected series of arched mirrors.
“My God,” Baughman said breathlessly as they turned a sudden corner and
confronted another infinite regression of knee-knockers. “How many
miles of tunnels do you have in this thing?”
Tombstone grinned. “Never counted ’em. It might give you an idea of
her size, though, if you think of Jefferson as an eighty-story building
lying on her side. In some ways, she’s a self-contained city. We’ve
got a population of over six thousand, with one radio station and two
television stations, a barber shop, a hospital complete with OR, a
dentist’s office, a ship’s exchange which passes for our own shopping
mall, a newspaper and printing office, laundry service, a hobby shop.”
“Anybody ever get lost down here?” Pamela asked. She stepped back
against a gray-painted bulkhead as three dungaree-clad sailors squeezed
past, going the other way.
“All the time,” Tombstone replied. “Everybody carries maps the first
few days they’re aboard. After that, well … I know I’d get lost
trying to find my way around down in snipe country, and I’ve been aboard
six months.”
“Snipe country?”
“Engineering spaces, below and aft. Don’t worry. That’s not where
we’re going.”
“Do you know where we’re going?” Griffith said. He was out of breath,
lugging the bulky camera he balanced on his shoulder. He’d taken a
number of shots of various parts of the ship at Pamela’s direction, but
he looked as though he’d be a lot happier taping congressmen in a
shore-based studio.
“Sure thing, Mr. Griffith. This way.”
They took another turn into a blind corner with a ladder zigzagging
precipitously into the depths of the ship. He led them down three
levels.
Pamela seemed to be bearing up well under the indignities of navigating
the steep ladders in her skirt; more than once, though, Tombstone had to
lead the way with a bellowed “make a hole” to clear the sightseeing
sailors who had gathered near the base of the next ladder down. It
seemed that Jefferson’s grape vine was working at full efficiency,
alerting sailors to the fact that a woman was making a tour of the
vessel.
“We were on the 0-3 deck,” he explained as they left the ladder and
doubled back in an unexpected direction. “That’s the level immediately
under the ‘roof,” or flight deck. Now we’re on the 0-1 level, coming up
on the hangar deck.”
“Does that mean we’re as far down in the ship as we can go?”
“Hardly. It means the decks below this one are numbered differently …
one, two, three, and so on down to the keel. Counting the island,
Page: 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 26 27 28 29 30 31 32 33 34 35 36 37 38 39 40 41 42 43 44 45 46 47 48 49 50 51 52 53 54 55 56 57 58 59 60 61 62 63 64 65 66 67 68 69 70 71 72 73 74 75 76 77 78 79 80 81 82 83 84 85 86 87 88 89 90 91 92 93 94 95 96 97 98 99 100 101 102 103 104 105 106 107 108 109 110 111 112 113 114 115 116 117 118 119 120 121 122 123 124 125 126 127 128 129 130 131 132 133 134 135 136 137 138 139 140 141 142