“If we should wait that long?” interrupted the Commodore. “Way I see it, we’ve had a series of incidents: the fishing boat disappearing for no apparent reason, the sighting report of a U-boat, and now your contact, all over a two week period. If there is a guy out there, he’s hanging around. We have to figure out two more things: is it true that there is a gomer out there, and why is he hanging around. In the meantime, I’ve got the Deyo going out on engineering sea trials next week. I’m going to have him do his trials in that area where you were this past week, and I’m going to have him do passive analysis all week, in the diesel engine sound spectrum. We’ll see what he turns up. I’m especially interested in the night time. If this is a submarine, I think this might be a conventional boat, a diesel electric. He’ll have to charge his batteries, and he’ll do that at night. With any luck we can catch him on the snort.”
“But he’ll be doing that amongst a dozen diesel powered fishing boats, Sir. It’ll all sound the same.”
“Maybe, but maybe not. If Deyo can record one diesel engine out there that is distinctly different from all the others, we get another clue. He won’t be able to localize it amongst all the others, but we’ll have another indicator that something is, in fact, out there. If we get lucky, he’ll get something before Wednesday, and that will strengthen our case with the Admiral. OK. XO, now
will
you excuse us.”
The Exec got up with alacrity and excused himself from the cabin. Mike sat back in his chair, and waited for some more incoming. The Commodore was looking at him again.
“OK, Michael. Here’s the story: when this gets to the group, Martinson’s going to take the position that you falsified an operational report. In a sense you did, but we have an out: ASW classification is a CO’s prerogative, and you did not believe the data as it was presented to you. When you got back in, and the guys were able to put together a
comprehensive analysis, you began to doubt your original decision, and then you did report it—you called me. I saw the presentation, and still doubted the data, but was willing to take it to Norfolk. Norfolk will decide what Norfolk will decide. If they say it’s a big nothing, the matter will never come up. If they say it’s possible, then, and only then, do we take it up the line. If they squawk, our defense is that we did not want to cry wolf until we were a lot more certain of our facts. Got it?”
“Yes, Sir. And I thank you for your support. I can see that I screwed this one up.”
“That you did, Sunshine. And lest you think I’m a generous soul, you should understand that my support is more than a little bit in my own self interest: they may well ask why I didn’t come to them as soon as I saw your sound and light show this morning. As we both know, classification of a sonar contact is a very subjective thing; in the absence of other indicators, we always tend towards caution. But the Admiral’s no dummy, either, and he’s going to see that the crucial part is the why: if there is a bad guy loitering out there in our opareas, there has to be a reason. Think on it, and remember what I had to say about integrity: senior officers’ capacity to indulge themselves in Navy politics is only made possible if every CO always tells the truth. You need to talk to your XO, too. Right now he thinks I’m picking on you unfairly. You need to explain to him that I’m being entirely fair in picking on you.”
Mike grinned. “Yes, Sir. And thank you.”
“Don’t thank me,” said the Commodore, putting on his hat. “I’m only saving my ass here; saving yours is a lesser included offense. Now you can see me to the quarterdeck.”
USS Goldsborough, pierside, Mayport Naval Base; Saturday, 26 April; 1245
After seeing the Commodore off, Mike walked back along the main deck to the hatchway leading into after officers’ country, as the group of officers’ staterooms on the port side aft was known. It was getting hot outside, and the metal bulkheads of the ship were beginning to radiate their own heat, baking the salt spray of a week at sea into a fine, white powder around the fittings. The Exec’s stateroom was the third door on the left in the narrow passageway. He knocked on the Exec’s door and went in.
Lieutenant Commander Farmer stood up in surprise even as Mike waved him back into his chair. The XO had a small mountain of paperwork on his desk. The Exec’s cabin was tiny, eight feet by seven, with a convertible couch bunk bed along the outboard wall, one porthole, a desk, a steel sink, and a clothes cabinet. Two people could not stand simultaneously in the patch of tiled deck space not taken up by the compact, steel furniture. The cabin was situated over the after fireroom, which, when the boilers were lit off, heated the steel deck to the point where bare feet were not a good idea. The only personal touches were a picture of the Exec’s family on the desk, and a few novels wedged above the bunkbed couch.
Mike threw himself down on the couch, and rubbed his eyes. The Exec sat back down in his desk chair, keeping a watchful expression on his face.
“Well, XO,” Mike said, with a sigh, “you win some and you lose some. I think today I lost one.”
“I appreciate your letting me stay, Cap’n,” said the Exec.
As soon as the Commodore had asked him to leave he had known that something bad was coming. Mike’s asking him to stay, when he, too, must have known what was coming, had been a great vote of confidence. Mike looked at the XO from between his fingers.
“Yeah, well, you got to see the other side of command, young man. It ain’t all glory, bells, and sideboys.”
The XO laughed, especially at Mike calling him young man. The Exec, with his enlisted time, was actually a few years older than the Captain. Mike knew that as well, but it was a private joke between them.
“The funny thing is,” Mike continued, “if I had gone straight in to the Group with a report of the contact, the Commodore would have clawed my ass for not consulting him first.”
“I don’t know if he would have done that, Cap’n,” said Ben, “but it would have put him on the sidelines. Right now we have him as our advocate. For whatever reason, that’s better than having nobody between us and Group Twelve.”
Mike looked at the Exec for a long moment. “That’s pretty astute, XO,” he said. “I’m going to have to keep an eye on you.”
“Yes, Sir. All us XO’s bear watching.”
“Damn right. OK. Now: we need to get Linc and his Chief prepped up to go to Norfolk Sunday with the Commodore. I want them to make duplicates of all their tapes, audio and visual, and the stuff they have on disc in that PC.”
“You afraid Norfolk might just lose the stuff?”
“Not in the sense of some grand conspiracy, I’m not. Nobody in the Norfolk Navy is that organized. But their standard practice is to analyze the fleet’s stuff and then discard it. They get so much submitted to the ASW lab that they can’t store it.”
“And if it turns out that we get told to go stifle,” said the XO, “and if something happens, it wouldn’t be all bad to have a copy of our original report.”
“There you go, being devious again.” Mike got up and stretched. “I’m going to head back to my boat.” He nodded at the paperwork stack. “Anything in that mess needs my attention today?”
“No, Sir. We’re in all next week; plenty of time for paperwork.”
“OK, I’m gone. I’ll be in town all weekend. My bilge alarms are both lit up, which means I’ve got another slow leak somewhere. That’s usually an all day, Maryann, job.”
The Exec grinned. “My wife’s got a couple of those waiting for me.”
“So get home. Like you said, we got all next week to do paperwork.”
“Aye, aye, Cap’n. If you insist.”
“I insist,” Mike snorted.
Ten minutes later, Mike left the ship and drove back to the marina. He glanced at the fishing piers as he drove by. All but one of the commercial boats were still out. Saturday afternoons at the shrimp piers were always a big business day. He’d have to slip over to the bar tonight to see what the locals were thinking about the mystery submarine, if anything. He suspected that the Navy’s failure to produce the “U-boat” would not be sitting well, especially in view of the still unexplained loss of the Rosie III.
Mike spent the afternoon in the bilge chambers of his boat, hunting down the source of a leak that had caused his bilge pumps to cycle during the week at sea. By 6 p.m., he was ready for a beer. Hooker, for some reason, did not seem to want to leave the boat, squawking loudly and trying to bite Mike’s hand when he reached for him.
“So, the hell with you, Bird,” said Mike, and left the main cabin.
He was wearing cut-off shorts, sneakers with no socks, and a Miami Dolphins T-shirt with the sleeves cut out. He walked across the marina piers, taking in the sights and sounds of a marina on a Saturday as all the weekend sailors came out to play with their toys. The sun was still well up in the western sky, and the first wet hints of the intense Florida summer were in the air. Mike did not care much for the muggy heat, but felt it easily counterbalanced by the reappearance of the ladies’ summer costumes. Judging from some of the outfits, the boats were not the only toys at the marina. This observation reminded him that Diane had promised to materialize today, or, more accurately, tonight. He felt at once excited and apprehensive.
He was not prepared, however, for the woman who was waiting for him in Hampton’s back bar. He let himself into the cool, air conditioned interior, adjusting his eyes to the magnified glare from the waterway through the big plate windows. Siam, the bartender, greeted him carefully, and nodded in the direction of one of the booths.
“You got a visitor,” he muttered.
Mike looked across the room. In the last booth a gray-haired woman sat hunched into the corner of the booth. Her face was pinched, and her expression, magnified by coke-bottle thick eyeglasses, transmitted equal parts of anger and discomfort. She fastened her eyes on him as he walked over. He had never seen her before.
“I’m Mike Montgomery,” he began.
“I know who y’are,” she said, in a flinty voice. “You find that damn U-boat got my brother?”
Mike did not sit down. He was aware that a few of the regulars at the bar were listening hard while trying to look like they were not. The woman was tiny, and easily in her middle seventies. She was dressed all in shapeless gray, but the anger in her face gave her substance.
“No, we didn’t,” replied Mike. “You’re Chris Mayfield’s sister?”
“I am,” she declared indignantly, as if he should have known that. “Why didn’t you? How come you’re back in, and not out there lookin’? You ain’t gonna find no U-boat in this damn bar.”
One of the men at the bar snorted, and she looked past Mike to give him a hard look.
“You shut your mouth over there; nothin’ but a bunch a goddamned drunks call yourself fishermen.”
The man ducked his head as his buddy on the next stool elbowed him. She looked back up at Mike. “Well?”
“Well, we did look,” Mike said. “But we simply did not find anything that would indicate there was a submarine out there. You have to understand—”
“I don’t gotta understand nothin’,” she spat. “I already understand that you fancy Dans in your big ships ain’t good for nothin’ but eatin’ up taxpayers’ money. You don’t produce
nothin’ but smoke and noise, and you foul up the fishin’ with all your goings on night and day. The one time we need you to find some damn devil that’s goin’ around killin’ honest fishermen, you go out Monday and come in Friday like it’s a week’s work, and then come over here for your liquor while my brother’s bein’ ’et up by the damn crabs.”
She slid sideways along the booth’s seat, her feet not quite touching the floor, pushing her way out of the booth and standing, with her head thrown back, to look Mike in the eye. She barely came up to his chest. She clutched a bag on one arm, and a walking stick in the other hand. She looked up at him with a disgusted expression on her wrinkled face, her eyes brilliant with anger. Mike was almost afraid she was going to swing on him with that stick.
“Fancy Dans, that’s all you Navy are. You mark my words, that damn devil’s gonna do it again, and you’re gonna be sorry you didn’t find him. Only next time I hope it’s one a yourn gets it.”
She swept the room with a hostile glance. “You’re all gonna be sorry, you mark my words. You won’t think about that when you’re in here with your damn liquor, but you go out there agin’, it’ll come to you. You’ll see.”
She swept out of the bar, her stick whacking the floor in an angry cadence.
Mike slipped onto a bar stool as Siam drew him a draft beer.
“Well, shit fire, as Hooker says,” breathed Mike.
“Where is that bag’a shit today?” asked Siam.
“On the boat; little shit didn’t want to come over here this evening.”
“Got a psychic bird, there,” said Siam, mopping the bar counter. “Enjoy meeting Ellie, did you?”
“Is that her name? She acted like she had been waiting for me.”
“She’s been in here since about four o‘clock. Asked me if you were gonna come in. I told her Saturdays, you usually came around for a beer if the ship was in. She said you were
in, she was gonna wait. Like to scared off half the regulars, starin’ at ’em with them beady, li’l eyes.”
This was as much as Mike had heard Siam say in a single afternoon, much less in one conversation. As if he had become aware of his sudden volubility, Siam shook his head and moved down the bar.
“Nothin’ out there, hey, Cap?” asked one of the men a few stools down.
“Not a thing but lots and lots of water,” said Mike, somewhat defensively.
He stared down at his beer, mentally grappling with the fact that his denials concerned something more than the Navy politics involved. Mayfield’s sister was convinced that her brother was dead and that something more than an accident had killed him.
“Don’t let her get to ya,” said the man. “Nobody believes that submarine shit, anyways.”
“Maxie Barr believes it,” offered his buddy, leaning forward so he could see Mike’s face. “Maxie Barr says he saw a fuckin’ U-boat, and that’s all there is to it. Says the Navy’s coverin’ somethin’ up, ’cause it can’t find the goddamned thing.”
“The Navy can’t find the goddamned thing because it’s not there,” retorted Mike, angrily. “Where’s Maxie think a U-boat’s come from, the Bermuda triangle?!”
“Beats me, Cap,” replied the fisherman. “But Maxie, he ain’t backin’ down none. Says he saw what he saw, and ain’t nobody gonna tell him otherwise.”
“Nobody could ever tell Maxie Barr otherwise,” said Mike, finishing most of his beer and sliding off the stool.
He had come down to see what the locals were thinking, and did not care for what he was hearing. Deep inside, he knew that his anger was due at least in part to the fact that he was not telling the truth to these people. As he left the back bar, the aromas from the restaurant kitchens swept over him, and he realized he had not eaten all day. He ducked into the formal main entrance of the restaurant and booked a window table for 7:30, and then went back to the
boat to change. He rarely ate out, but he did not feel like constructing a culinary production.
Returning at 7:30, he allowed a delectable blonde in a short skirt to show him to his table, and he was torn between admiring the view outside or the view walking away from him. He settled for the menu. His waiter was a bubbling young man who was so full of good cheer and enthusiasm as he chirped through the evening specials that he almost put Mike off his dinner. Mike ordered a dozen oysters on the half shell, a swordfish filet and a Caesar salad, and a bottle of Kendall Jackson chardonnay in place of a cocktail. He was halfway through his dinner when he looked up and saw the Squadron Chief Staff Officer, Commander Bill Barstowe, his wife, and Diane Martinson entering the dining room. Mike saw them from his window table in the corner, but they did not initially see him as they were shown to a table about twenty feet from Mike’s table.
Diane was dressed in a peach colored, sleeveless sheath dress with a single strand of large pearls around her throat. Other men in the dining room followed her with their eyes as she followed the hostess to the table. She sat down, thanked the waiter who pushed in her chair, casually patted her hair, and, looking up, saw Mike across the dining room. Her eyes widened in surprise for an instant, and then she looked away at the water, giving no overt sign of recognition.
For the next half hour, Mike tried to keep his eyes off their table. Commander Barstowe’s back was to him, and his wife had not seen Mike. Diane occasionally let her glance traverse Mike’s table, and once he thought he saw the beginnings of a smile on her face when she looked directly at him across the room. Commander Barstowe’s wife was a chatterbox, oblivious to anything that might be going on around her. Her husband appeared to listen attentively, but Mike decided that Commander Barstowe was actually a lot more interested in looking at Diane.