The Edge of Honor
Authors: P. T. Deutermann
Tags: #Fiction, #Espionage, #Military, #History, #Vietnam War
| The Edge of Honor | |
| P. T. Deutermann | |
| (1993) | |
| Rating: | **** |
| Tags: | Fiction, Espionage, Military, History, Vietnam War |
### From Publishers Weekly
Deutermann delivers a lot more than the standard military thriller in his second novel (after Scorpion in the Sea) , though there is certainly plenty of high-tech weaponry and violent action surrounding the mission of the U.S.S. John Bell Hood in the Gulf of Tonkin in 1969, at the height of the Vietnam War. The author's 26 years of active Navy service are put to good use in depicting shipboard life, procedures and reactions under battle conditions. While Deutermann differs from other purveyors of military fiction in his ability to create strong and compelling female characters, the story of Maddy Holcomb's seduction by an intriguing civilian Marine trainer back home in San Diego is essentially a counterpoint to the heart of the matter, her husband Lt. Brian Holcomb's shipboard struggle with an unexpected enemy. Slotted as weapons officer aboard the Hood , Holcomb desperately needs a good rating to advance his career. After a disastrous foul-up makes evident that there is a dangerous drug problem among the enlisted ranks aboard ship, he wants to crack down hard, but is thwarted by the executive officer. Ship's command chooses to deal with the situation in its own off-the-books fashion, keyed somehow, Brian comes to realize, to the enigmatic captain's strange behavior. Brian continues to press to have things done "the Navy way," unaware that the Hood 's mysterious drug kingpin is sabotaging his efforts. Deutermann keeps the adrenalin pumping in this exciting genre standout.
Copyright 1994 Reed Business Information, Inc.
### From Library Journal
Brian Holcomb is the new weapons officer for the John Bell Hood, a guided-missile frigate on patrol off the coast of Vietnam in the last months of the war. Striving to overcome a less-than-glowing fitness report from his previous ship, Holcomb is tempted to fall into the "go with the flow" ethics of the other officers, who overlook stoned young sailors, until he is befriended by a group of chief petty officers who practice their own justice to keep the ship afloat. In the meantime, Brian's beautiful but immature wife, Maddy, is attracted to a mysterious Native American on his own way to the war, and the ship's captain seems to be unwell and curiously detached from daily problems. Vividly drawn scenes of shipboard life and customs, including liberty at Subic Bay in the Philippines, are contrasted with the high-tension drama of the war itself. Deutermann, a career naval officer, does his usual excellent job of accurate and exciting tale-telling; his romantic subplot, here more successful than in Scorpion in the Sea (LJ 9/15/92), allows him to add the extra dimension of the world of navy wives. A winner for naval history and adventure buffs.
*Elsa Pendleton, Boeing Computer Support Svcs., Ridgecrest, Cal.*
Copyright 1994 Reed Business Information, Inc.
THE EDGE OF HONOR by P. T. DEUTERMANN
THUNDEROUS APPLAUSE FOR P. T. DEUTERMANN AND THE EDGE OF HONOR:
St. Martin’s Paperbacks Titles by P. T. Deutermann
scorpion in the sea THE EDGE OF HONOR
ST. MARTIN’S PAPERBACKS
NOTE: If you purchased this book without a cover you should be aware that this book is stolen property. It was reported as “unsold and destroyed” to the publisher, and neither the author nor the publisher has received any payment for this “stripped book.”
This is a work of fiction. Characters, military organizations, ships, and places in this novel are either the product of the author’s imagination, or, if real, or based on real entities, are used fictitiously without any intent to describe their actual conduct or character. Insofar as this book addresses military issues, policies, and history, the work represents the views of the author alone and does not necessarily represent the policies and views of the United States Department of Defense.
THE EDGE OF HONOR
Copyright S 1994 by P. T. Deutermann.
Official Privilege excerpt copyright S 1995 by P. T. Deutermann.
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be used or reproduced in any manner whatsoever without written permission except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles or reviews. For information address St. Martin’s Press, 175 Fifth Avenue, New York, N. Y.
10010.
Library of Congress Catalog Card Number: 94-2670
ISBN: 0-312-95396-8
Printed in the United States of America
St. Martin’s Press hardcover edition published 1994 St. Martin’s Paperbacks edition/May 1995
10 987654321
This book is dedicated to the thousands of men and women of the United States Navy who served honorably during the Vietnam War.
Acknowledgments
I wish to thank George Witte, Carol Edwards, and Sally Richardson at St. Martin’s Press for their extensive help with this book, and also my wife, Susan, for her sustaining confidence in this story.
THE EDGE OF HONOR
San Diego, California, September 1969
Brian Holcomb stood naked at the darkened bedroom window, staring out at the park across the street. The pale bark of the gray eucalyptus trees was daubed in orange from the glow of the new sodium-vapor lights along Balboa Park Drive. At least something around here had a glow on; he sure as hell did not. Maddy, his wife, spoke to him from the bed.
“Brian, it’s all right. Brian, come back to bed.”
“It’s not all right. Nothing’s all right. It’s deployment day, and I’m going away for seven months, and you’re miserable, and I can’t even—”
“Brian, please. It’s our last time to be together. Please, let’s not fight. I’m sorry I’m being such a bitch about the deployment. But come back to bed.” Brian sighed and turned around. The sight of Maddy in the soft light of the bedroom, that mass of blond hair, her lovely face, her glorious breasts bared above the sheet, was still enough to take his breath away, even after almost four years of marriage. So then why the hell on this, their last night, morning, whatever, together, couldn’t he perform?
As if reading his thought, Maddy patted the bed next to her.
“Come on, Brian. I hate it when you’re right there but not right here beside me. We should have just cuddled, like we agreed. We both know this is a lousy time for sex. Please?”
He walked back over to his side of the bed. She was right—as usual. He sat down on the edge of the bed and she slid across, folding her arms around him, her hair enveloping the side of his face. Her skin was warm against his back.
“Hey?” she whispered. “We’ll get through this; everyone else seems to manage. This isn’t the first ship that has to go to WESTPAC. I’ve got my job, and the rest of the wives—”
“Whom you don’t like very much.”
“I do like them. It’s more a question of not having very much in common with them, Brian. I work, most of them don’t, and we have no—”
“Yeah.”
He felt her stiffen slightly, and the blade of anger from the night before slipped between them again. They had gone out to dinner at Mr.
A’s, an expensive restaurant overlooking the San Diego skyline, whose tall windows gave a cockpit-level view of the jetliners as they swooped down into Lindbergh Field below. Brian had thought of going out to dinner as an activity, something to do that would eat up three or four hours of the “last night.”
As Maddy had fretted more and more about the ship’s departure, everything they did had acquired the adjective last: the last supper, the last night, the last morning—the last everything, because it was now deployment day.
He had made the mistake of mentioning children again, and the last evening had gone right off the last tracks.
And now, in just a few short hours, he would get up, shower, button and zip into his whites, and as It. Brian Holcomb, USN, Weapons officer in USS John Bell Hood, go down to the ship at the Thirty-second Street Naval Station and sail away to the Vietnam War for the next seven months.
And Maddy, his beautiful young wife of three-point something years, was not taking it too well. The ship’s schedule had not helped. The thirty days prior to deployment were called PORN: Preparation for Overseas Movement.
Perversely, as far as families were concerned, the closer a ship got to deployment day, the more time it demanded of its officers. The PORN preparations were seemingly endless as the avalanche of supplies, repair parts, new people, the latest tactical manuals, and a flurry of final grooming and repairs on the ship’s weapons and operations systems all conspired to produce twelve hour workdays at precisely the time that the wives tended to become clinging vines, desperately anxious for every moment of contact. Brian’s nights at home during the last thirty days had been punctuated by dramatic mood swings on Maddy’s part, from loving wife who poured on the affection to shrill harridan who railed against the deployment, the Vietnam War, and his Navy career in general.
The hell of it was that he was excited to be going.
He was beginning a prime assignment aboard a modern guided-missile ship, and they were bound for the Red Crown station up in the Gulf of Tonkin, to the heart of the carrier-air-war action on the one ship that controlled the skies over the Gulf, Damn it, he shouldn’t have to feel guilty about that. And more than that, this assignment was a make-or-break tour of duty: His promotion to lieutenant commander depended on his doing very well in this ship. Maddy was not helping. As a matter of fact, Maddy was on the verge of doing some damage. On the other hand, he fully recognized that she was acting this way only because he was going away.
He turned to her then, putting his arms around her, breathing in her sweet, familiar fragrance, his face pressed against her throat as she hugged him. He knew that all the noise was not aimed at him, but at what was coming for herthe empty apartment, the empty bed, long-delayed letters in place of a touch in the night. He would be in the thick of fleet operations in the Gulf of Tonkin and she would face the same empty routine day after day. His heart ached, not for the first time, at the thought of being away from her for seven long months.
At moments like this, even he was willing to think of the Navy as the god damned Navy, lately her favorite expression. And then there was that enormously sensitive nerve about children upon which he had just touched. He wanted kids; she did, too, but she had set what he felt was an impossible condition: “We’ll have a family only when you’re going to be home to help.” A successful career in the seagoing Navy did not necessarily lend itself to that proposition. They had both finally realized that the whole subject of starting a family was becoming a dangerous minefield, a complication that neither of them needed, especially just now. He sighed again.
“What time is it?” he asked, his voice muffled in her hair.
“It’s not time yet,” she whispered, hugging him tighter, pulling his face down to her breasts. He felt the familiar stirring of desire and wondered whether it was worth another try. She leaned down, violet eyes huge in the semidarkness, and kissed him deeply. He decided that it was.
Maddy lay back in the rumpled bed, the sheets pulled up to her chin, her hands clenched, and listened to the sounds of Brian in the shower. Her breathing had returned to normal, although she was definitely not going to play any tennis today. After the debacle of dinner at Mr. A’s, a fitful night talking about everything but the deployment, and finally an aborted attempt at lovemaking, Brian’s second wind had come on like a gale, with a violence and passion that had caught her by surprise and then swept her up despite the gloom and doom of deployment day.
Afterward, she wondered fleetingly how much of that passion had been anger and how much love.
She knew she had been making life difficult, and even if their almost frantic lovemaking had managed to dissolve her depression for even a little while, she sensed his underlying frustration. She had to keep telling herself, he’s not doing this on purpose; he’s not leaving me.
It’s just the ship.
Deployment day—sounds like Judgment Day. Seven months. If everything went well, seven months; otherwise, longer. She clenched her fists and squeezed her thighs together until it hurt. They had been through half a deployment to the Mediterranean when he was in Decatur, and then two glorious years ashore at the Monterey Naval Postgraduate School. Then came the revelation that his fitness reports from Decatur had been not quite up to par and that he would have to retour as a department head, this time in a bigger ship. He must have told her a hundred times, the detailers were doing him a favor, sending him to a deploying ship to enhance his chances for promotion. She knew all the whys and wherefores by heart, and it still didn’t help. Seven months, two hundred and ten days, more or less. More, probably. And if Brian’s career advanced and the war continued, there would be even longer, more dangerous missions.
Ostensibly, she could fill up her days with her job at the bank, but seeing the civilians there was already making the imminent separation more painfultheir comparatively stable lives offered a stark contrast to her peculiar status as a Navy wife whose husband was deployed. One of her cohorts in the bank had made an ironic comment about the benefits of getting an occasional minidivorce, courtesy of the USN, but Maddy failed to see the humor.