‘Sandbar, it’s been building there from the storms we had last winter, but my charts show less than that. Besides, it’s a soft bottom.’
Pam came up just then, wearing clothing that was nearly respectable, and Kelly realized he didn’t know her last name.
‘Hi, I’m Pam.’
‘Y’all want to freshen up? We have all day to look at the problem.’ There was general agreement on that point, and Kelly led them off to his home.
‘What the hell is that?’ Sam Rosen asked. ‘That’ was one of the bunkers that had been built in 1943, two thousand square feet, with a roof fully three feet thick. The entire structure was reinforced concrete and was almost as sturdy as it looked. A second, smaller bunker lay beside it.
‘This place used to belong to the Navy,’ Kelly explained, ‘but I lease it now.’
‘Nice dock they built for you,’ Rosen noted.
‘Not bad at all,’ Kelly agreed. ‘Mind if I ask what you do?’
‘Surgeon,’ Rosen replied.
‘Oh, yeah?’ That explained the hands.
‘Professor of surgery,’ Sarah corrected. ‘But he can’t drive a boat worth a damn!’
‘The goddamned charts were off!’ the professor grumbled as Kelly led them inside. ‘Didn’t you hear?’
‘People, that’s history now, and lunch and a beer will allow us to consider it in comfort.’ Kelly surprised himself with his words. Just then his ears caught a sharp crack coming across the water from somewhere to the south. It was funny how sound carried across the water.
“What was that?’ Sam Rosen had sharp ears, too.
‘Probably some kid taking a muskrat with his .22,’ Kelly judged. ‘It’s a pretty quiet neighborhood, except for that. In the fall it can get a little noisy around dawn – ducks and geese.’
‘I can see the blinds. You hunt?’
‘Not anymore,’ Kelly replied.
Rosen looked at him with understanding, and Kelly decided to reevaluate him for a second time.
‘How long?’
‘Long enough. How’d you know?’
‘Right after I finished residency, I made it to Iwo and Okinawa. Hospital ship.’
‘Hmm, kamikaze time?’
Rosen nodded. ‘Yeah, lots of fun. What were you on?’
‘Usually my belly,’ Kelly answered with a grin.
‘UDT? You look like a frogman,’ Rosen said. ‘I had to fix a few of those.’
‘Pretty much the same thing, but dumber.’ Kelly dialed the combination lock and pulled the heavy steel door open.
The inside of the bunker surprised the visitors. When Kelly had taken possession of the place, it had been divided into three large, bare rooms by stout concrete walls, but now it looked almost like a house, with painted drywall and rugs. Even the ceiling was covered. The narrow viewslits were the only reminder of what it had once been. The furniture and rugs showed the influence of Patricia, but the current state of semiarray was evidence that only a man lived here now. Everything was neatly arranged, but not as a woman would do things. The Rosens also noted that it was the man of the house who led them to the ‘galley’ and got things out of the old-fashioned refrigerator box while Pam wandered around a little wide-eyed.
‘Nice and cool,’ Sarah observed. ‘Damp in the winter, I bet.’ –
‘Not as bad as you think.’ Kelly pointed to the radiators around the perimeter of the room. ‘Steam heat. This place was built to government specifications. Everything works and everything cost too much.’
‘How do you get a place like this?’ Sam asked.
‘A friend helped me get the lease. Surplus government property.’
‘He must be some friend,’ Sarah said, admiring the built-in refrigerator.
‘Yes, he is.’
Vice Admiral Winslow Holland Maxwell, USN, had his office on the E-Ring of the Pentagon. It was an outside office, allowing him a fine view of Washington – and the demonstrators, he noted angrily to himself. Baby Killers! one placard read. There was even a North Vietnamese flag. The chanting, this Saturday morning, was distorted by the thick window glass. He could hear the cadence but not the words, and the former fighter pilot couldn’t decide which was more enraging.
‘That isn’t good for you, Dutch.’
‘Don’t I know it!’ Maxwell grumbled.
‘The freedom to do that is one of the things we defend,’ Rear Admiral Casimir Podulski pointed out, not quite making that leap of faith despite his words. It was just a little too much. His son had died over Haiphong in an A-4 strike-fighter. The event had made the papers because of the young aviator’s parentage, and fully eleven anonymous telephone calls had come in the following week, some just laughing, some asking his tormented wife where the blotter was supposed to be shipped. ‘All those nice, peaceful, sensitive young people.’
‘So why are you in such a great mood, Cas?’
‘This one goes in the wall safe, Dutch.’ Podulski handed over a heavy folder. Its edges were bordered in red-and-white striped tape, and it bore the coded designator BOXWOOD GREEN.
‘They’re going to let us play with it?’ That was a surprise.
‘It took me till oh-three-thirty, but yes. Just a few of us, though. We have authorization for a complete feasibility study.’ Admiral Podulski settled into a deep leather chair and lit up a cigarette. His face was thinner since the death of his son, but the crystal-blue eyes burned as bright as ever.
‘They’re going to let us go ahead and do the planning?’ Maxwell and Podulski had worked towards that end for several months, never in any real expectation that they’d be allowed to pursue it.
‘Who’d ever suspect us?’ the Polish-born Admiral asked with an ironic look. ‘They want us to keep it off the books.’
‘Jim Greer, too?’ Dutch asked.
‘Best intel guy I know, unless you’re hiding one somewhere.’
‘?? just started at CIA, I heard last week,’ Maxwell warned.
‘Good. We need a good spy, and his suit’s still blue, last time I checked.’
‘We’re going to make enemies doing this, lots of ’em.’
Podulski gestured at the window and the noise. He hadn’t changed all that much since 1944 and USS Essex. ‘With all those a hundred feet away from us, what’ll a few more matter?’
‘How long have you had the boat?’ Kelly asked about halfway through his second beer. Lunch was rudimentary, cold cuts and bread supplemented by bottled beer.
‘We bought it last October, but we’ve only been running it two months,’ the doctor admitted. ‘But I took the Power Squadron courses, finished top in my class.’ He was the sort who finished number one in nearly everything, Kelly figured.
‘You’re a pretty good line-handler,’ he observed, mainly to make the man feel better.
‘Surgeons are pretty good with knots, too.’
‘You a doc, too, ma’am?’ Kelly asked Sarah.
‘Pharmacologist. I also teach at Hopkins.’
‘How long have you and your wife lived here?’ Sam asked, and the conversation ground to an awkward halt.
‘Oh, we just met,’ Pam told them artlessly. Naturally enough it was Kelly who was the most embarrassed. The two physicians merely accepted the news as a matter of course, but Kelly worried that they’d see him as a man taking advantage of a young girl. The thoughts associated with his behavior seemed to race in circles around the inside of his skull until he realized that no one else seemed to care all that much.
‘Let’s take a look at that propeller.’ Kelly stood. ‘Come on.’
Rosen followed him out the door. The heat was building outside, and it was best to get things done quickly. The secondary bunker on the island housed Kelly’s workshop. He selected a couple of wrenches and wheeled a portable air compressor towards the door.
Two minutes later he had it sitting next to the doctor’s Hatteras and buckled a pair of weight belts around his waist.
‘Anything I have to do?’ Rosen asked.
Kelly shook his head as he stripped off his shirt. ‘Not really. If the compressor quits, I’ll know pretty quick, and I’ll only be down five feet or so.’
‘I’ve never done that.’ Rosen turned his surgeon’s eyes to Kelly’s torso, spotting three separate scars that a really good surgeon might have been skillful enough to conceal. Then he remembered that a combat surgeon didn’t always have the time for cosmetic work.
‘I have, here and there,’ Kelly told him on the way to the ladder.
‘I believe it,’ Rosen said quietly to himself.
Four minutes later, by Rosen’s watch, Kelly was climbing back up the ladder.
‘Found your problem.’ He set the remains of both props on the concrete dock.
‘God! What did we hit?’
Kelly sat down for a moment to strip off the weights. It was all he could do not to laugh. ‘Water, doc, just water.’
‘What?’
‘Did you have the boat surveyed before you bought it?’
‘Sure, the insurance company made me do that. I got the best buy around, he charged me a hundred bucks.’
‘Oh, yeah? What deficiencies did he give you?’ Kelly stood back up and switched the compressor off.