“I’ve had enough.”
“No, you haven’t. And neither have I. It took me a year to get over that. You don’t have a year. All you got’s tonight. You gotta talk about it, Captain. I know. Think it’s bad now? It gets worse.”
He took another pull on the drink. At least it was good stuff, O’Malley told himself He watched Morris sit there for five minutes, sipping at his drink and wondering if he should just go back to the ship. The proud captain. Like all captains, condemned to live alone, and this one was lonelier than most. He’s afraid I’m right, O’Malley thought. He’s afraid it will get worse. You poor bastard. If you only knew.
“Run through it” the pilot said quietly. “Analyze it one step at a time.”
“You already did that for me.”
“I have a big mouth. Has to be for my feet to fit in it. You do it in your sleep, Ed. Might as well do it when you’re awake.”
And, slowly, he did. O’Malley coached him through the sequence. Weather conditions, ship’s course and speed. What sensors were operating. In an hour they were three quarters of the way down the bottle. Finally they got to the torpedoes. Morris’s voice started to crack.
“There just wasn’t anything else I could do! The Goddamned thing just came in. We only had one nixie out, and the first fish blew that the hell away. I tried to maneuver the ship, but-”
“But you were up against a homing torpedo. You can’t outrun ’em and you can’t outturn ’em.”
“I’m not supposed to let-”
“Oh, horseshit!” The pilot refilled the glasses. “You think you’re the first guy ever lost a ‘can? Didn’t you ever play ball, Ed? Hell, there’s two sides, and both of ’em play to win. You expect those Russian sub skippers are just gonna sit there and say, ‘Kill me, kill me’? You must be dumber ‘n I thought.”
“My men-”
“Some of them are dead, most of them aren’t. I’m sorry some’re dead. I’m sorry Ricky died. Kid wasn’t even nineteen yet. But I didn’t kill him, and you didn’t kill your men. You saved your ship. You brought her back with most of the crew.”
Morris drained his glass with one long pull. Jerry refilled it, not bothering with ice.
“It’s my responsibility. Look, when I got back to Norfolk, I visited-I mean, I had to visit their families. I’m the captain. I gotta-there was this little girl, and . . . Jesus, O’Malley, what the hell do you say?” Morris demanded. He was sobbing, near tears, Jerry saw. Good.
“They don’t put that in the book,” O’Malley agreed. You think they would have learned by now.
“Pretty little girl. What do you tell the kids?” The tears started. It had taken nearly two hours.
“You tell the little girl that her daddy was a good man and he did his best, and you did your best, cause that’s all we can do, Ed. You did everything right, but sometimes it just doesn’t matter.” It wasn’t the first time O’Malley had had men cry on his shoulder. He remembered doing it himself What a miserable life this can be, he thought, that it can bring good men to this.
Morris recovered a few minutes later, and by the time they finished the bottle both men were as drunk as either ever got. O’Malley helped his captain up and walked him to the door.
“What’s the matter, Navy, can’t take it?” He was a merchant seaman standing alone at the bar. It was the wrong thing to say.
It was hard to tell from the baggy flight suit that O’Malley was a man of considerable strength. His left arm was wrapped around Morris. His right hand grabbed the other man by the throat and dragged him away from the bar.
“You got anything else to say about my friend, Dickweed?” O’Malley tightened his grip.
The reply came in a whisper. “All I meant was he has trouble with his liquor.”
The pilot released him. “Good night.”
Maneuvering the captain back to the ship was difficult, partly because O’Malley was also drunk but mainly because Morris was on the point of passing out. That had been part of the plan, too, but the Hammer had cut his timing a little close. The bow looked awfully steep from the pier.
“What seems to be the problem?”
“Good evening, Master Chief.”
“Good evening, Commander. You got the captain with you?”
“Sure could use a hand, too.”
“You’re not kidding.” The chief came down the gangway. Together they got the captain aboard. The really hard part was the ladder up to his stateroom. For this another sailor was summoned.
“Damn,” the youngster observed. “The old man really knows how to tie one on!”
“Takes a real sailorman to know how to get blasted,” the master chief agreed. The three of them got him up the ladder. O’Malley took it from there and landed Morris on his bunk. The captain was sleeping soundly, and the flyer hoped the nightmare wouldn’t come back. His still did.
NORTHWOOD, ENGLAND
“Well, Commander?”
“Yes, sir. I think it’ll work. I see most of the assets are nearly in place.”
“The original plan had a lesser chance of success. I’m sure it would have got their attention, of course, but this way we just might be able to damage the force severely.”
Toland looked up at the map. “The timing is still tricky, but not very different from that attack we made on the tankers. I like it, sir. Sure would solve a few problems. What’s the convoy situation?”
“There are eighty ships assembled in New York harbor. They sail in twenty-four hours. Heavy escort, carriers in support, even a new Aegis cruiser with the merchants. And the next step after that, of course-” Beattie went on.
“Yes, sir. And Doolittle is the key.”
“Exactly. I want you back at Stornoway. I’ll also be sending one of my air operations types to work with your chaps. We’ll keep you informed of all developments. Remember that distribution for this is to be strictly limited to the personnel involved.”
“Understood, sir.”
“Off with you, then.”
34 – Feelers
USS REUBEN JAMES
0700 hours came rather early for Jerry O’Malley. He had the lower bunk in a two-man stateroom-his copilot had the upper-and his first considered move was to take three aspirins and sit back down. It was almost funny, he thought. “The Hammer.” He felt it inside his head. No, he corrected himself, he had his dipping sonar in there, on automatic ping. Still and all, he had performed something remembered from his youth as a corporal work of mercy, and that helped give purpose to his suffering. He gave the aspirins ten minutes to get into his bloodstream, then went forward to the shower. First cold, then hot water cleared his head.
The wardroom was full but quiet, the officers assembled according to age into little knots of whispered conversation. These young officers hadn’t faced combat before, and the bravado they might have felt on leaving San Diego some weeks before had been replaced with the sober reality of the task at hand. Ships had been sunk. Men they knew were dead. For these kids, fear was a more terrible unknown than the technical aspects of combat for which they had been trained. He could see the question in their faces; only time would answer it. They would learn to endure it, or they would not. Combat held no mysteries for O’Malley. He knew that he would be afraid, and that he would put the fear aside as best he could. There was no sense dwelling on it. It would come soon enough.
“Good morning, XO!”
“Morning, Jerry. I was just going to call the skipper.”
“He needs his sleep, Frank.” The pilot had disconnected Morris’s alarm clock before leaving the stateroom. Ernst read O’Malley’s face.
“Well, nothing we really need him for till eleven.”
“I knew you were a good XO, Frank.” O’Malley debated between bug juice and coffee. The fruit drink this morning was the orange kind-the flavors didn’t relate to any particular fruit. O’Malley liked the red kind, but not the orange. He poured some coffee.
“I supervised the torpedo loading last night. We cut a minute off our best time-in the dark.”
“Sounds good to me. When’s the pre-sail brief?”
“Fourteen hundred, in a theater two blocks from here. COs, XOs, and selected others. I expect you’ll want to come, too?”
“Yeah.”
Ernst’s voice dropped. “You sure the skipper’s all right?” There are no secrets aboard a ship.
“He’s been on straight combat ops since Day One of this fracas. He needed to get a little unwrapped, an ancient and honored naval tradition” -he raised his voice- “damned shame that all these little boys are too young to partake in it! Didn’t anybody think to get a newspaper? NFL summer camps are opened all over the country, and there ain’t no paper! What the hell kind of wardroom is this!”