The Edge of Honor (65 page)

“That’s a great idea, Garuda. But first let’s see what happens at mast.”

Brian stood slightly apart from the mast case’s participants at 0900 the following morning. Captain’s mast was being convened on the mess decks, where an oak podium had been placed in an open area, the three report chits lying on top. Assembled in a line in front of the podium were the three accused, dressed in clean dress whites, including caps. On the right side of the lineup, in his capacity as MAA, was RD1 Rockheart.

Standing behind them were the division officer, Lieutenant Hudson; the fire control division chief, Chief Hallowell; and the divisional leading petty officer. Standing in two ranks to the left were selected petty officers from every division in the ship, brought in to witness the proceedings. Opposite and facing them were the doc, baby doc, and FTM3 Warren, the primary witnesses. The mess decks were hot and humid as usual, with the smells of breakfast lingering in the steamy air. CS1 Wolcezjarski and two of the mess cooks were watching from the partially opened door of the galley office.

The 1MC announced that captain’s mast was now being held on the mess decks and commanded silence in the area. As if on cue, the chief master-at-arms came through the forward door to the mess decks and yelled, “Attention on deck!” He was followed by the captain and the executive officer, both in working khakis but wearing their dress caps with the brass scrambled eggs to add a note of formality. The three marched up to the podium, where the Sheriff stepped aside and nodded to Rockheart. Rockheart stood to attention, faced the three accused, and barked, “Mast cases, ten-hut! Uncover, two!”

The three petty officers whipped off their caps and faced the podium.

Only one, Boyle, looked directly at the captain. The other two stared at the base of the podium. Petty Officer Lanier had an angry expression on his face and stood fractionally apart from the other two.

The captain stepped up to the podium and picked up the first report chit. Brian thought that the captain looked fairly well for a change, with color in his cheeks and an alert expression in his eyes. His uniform still draped on him as if he had been fasting and the skin on his face was drawn tight over prominent cheekbones, but otherwise there were few signs of the torpor and fatigue Brian had seen before. The captain studied the first report chit for a full minute, then looked up at Boyle.

“Petty Officer Boyle, you are accused of violation of Article Ninety-two, UCMJ, being drugged on duty on the twenty-eighth of October, in the guided-missile plotting room. You have seen this report chit and signed it?”

“Yes, sir.”

“I will warn you now that anything you say during these proceedings may be used in evidence against you in any subsequent trial by court-martial. That means that if you do not want to say anything, you don’t have to, but what you do say can be used against you if we choose to. If you choose not to speak, this fact will not be held against you.

Do you understand this warning?”

“Yes, sir.”

The captain addressed the same words and warnings to the other two accused and received their individual acknowledgments. He put the report chits down and looked at all three.

“Now, gentlemen, you are all charged with the same offense, essentially at the same time and in the same place. Smoking marijuana in missile plot. You’ve read the report chits. The officers and petty officers who caught you at it are present and ready to testify, and their testimony is summarized in the report chits you have signed, which you have read, correct?”

The three accused nodded silently. Lanier glanced over at Warren with a stony look, but Warren stared straight ahead.

“All right. The results of a medical urinalysis test for each of you is contained in the report chits, and for each of you it was positive. The executive officer has caused these matters to be investigated, and he has recommended that you be brought to mast. Do each of you acknowledge that you have read and understand the charges and supporting evidence in the report chits?”

All three replied with a muted

“Yes, sir.” The captain leaned on the podium for the first time. Brian detected a faint note of fatigue in his voice. Or was it disappointment?

“Very well, then. I’m going to ask each of you the same question, which is: Are you guilty or not guilty?

Remember that you are not required to answer the question.

Petty Officer Boyle, are you guilty of the offense charged?”

Boyle shook his head.

“Is that a no, Boyle?”

“I don’t want to say anything, Captain.”

“All right, Boyle. Corey?”

“I don’t wanta say nothin’, either, Captain.”

“Very well. Lanier?”

“Yes, sir, I did it. Done it before, and I’ll do it again, I get the chance. Same as these two chickenshits here.”

“Lanier, watch your mouth,” growled Chief Jackson.

There was an uncomfortable silence in the small gathering as the captain stared at Lanier, who now would not look at him, a defiant expression on his young face. Brian was suddenly struck by how young all three were.

They were E-5s, petty officers two grades away from being chiefs, and yet they were what—twenty-two, twenty three years old? And headed for a court-martial, he believed, judging from the captain’s expression.

“Well, gentlemen, one of you admits the offense, and the evidence is pretty damn clear on all three of you. I am disgusted with what you have done, have obviously been doing, which is getting yourself drugged on the ship.

You three, of all people, who man the ship’s primary self defense system, the guided missiles, when we’re in a war zone, and in the presence of enemy aircraft based only fifty miles away from our station.

The whole crew depends on you people to do your job flawlessly if we ever get attacked, and your response to this responsibility is to indulge in drugs on your watch station. You disgrace yourselves, the ship, and the reputation of the whole crew by your actions. In another place and time, I would have had you lashed and then hanged.”

The three sailors’ heads snapped up at this last statement.

Everybody in the room looked up at the captain, whose face had hardened perceptibly. Out of the corner of his eye, Brian saw Wolcezjarski and his crew back into the galley office and quietly shut the door.

“But since I can’t do that, I am awarding each of you a special court-martial, to be convened at Clark Air Force Base in thirty days’ time. I am placing each of you on pretrial restraint. You will be flown off the ship on this afternoon’s log helo to the carrier and from the carrier to the naval air station at Cubi Point, and from Cubi Point you will be taken to the Air Force stockade at Clark to await trial. That is all. Chief Jackson, take them to their compartment to pack their seabags.”

Jackson acknowledged and then nodded at Rockheart.

“Mast cases, ten-hut!”

Everyone in the room stood to attention.

“Mast cases, cover, two!”

When the three accused had put their hats back on, RD1 Rockheart marched them out of the mess decks, leaving the officers and witnesses standing around the podium. The captain straightened up.

“XO, I will see you and the Weapons officer in my cabin now.”

“Aye, aye, sir.”

Chief Jackson preceded the captain out of the mess decks, announcing, “Gangway,” scattering the people who had been watching from Broadway.

The exec stepped forward to the podium and gathered up the papers.

“That’s it, gents,” he said. “Mr. Holcomb, let’s go topside.”

Brian followed the exec forward to the wardroom passageway, up the ladder to the next level, and into the captain’s cabin. The captain was standing by the portholes, looking out at the sea. Brian and the exec stood by the table until he turned around and indicated that they should be seated. The captain remained standing.

“Well now,” he began, looking back out the portholes, “Mr. Holcomb.

Given the seriousness of the crimes charged this morning, I had little choice but to get those men off the ship. The Navy’s policy is fairly clear on that matter, as the exec reminded me this morning. But this incident has created something of a hole in the missile fire-control division, has it not?”

“Yes, sir,” Brian said, expecting a different question.

“What are your intentions?”

Brian remembered Garuda’s suggestion. “I plan to cycle the chiefs who normally stand the FCSC watch in Combat through the console positions down in plot for a few hours each watch. They’ll take the three best makee learns we have under close instruction. I plan to augment that arrangement with a number of tracking drills that we can initiate from Combat with the cooperation of support tracks in the Gulf.”

The captain turned around. With his back to the portholes, the glare streaming through the glass had the effect of putting his face in the shadow.

“The missile plot positions are important?”

“Yes, sir, they can be. When SWIC sends a designation to FCSC and he assigns a director to the target, in theory that’s all it takes. The target data is fed from the SPS-forty-eight radar to the director’s computers, and the director should slew right to it, in range, bearing, and elevation angle. But when the designation is fuzzy or a little off, or there’s weather in the target area, the guys in plot enter into it.

They can physically see what the director’s acquisition radar is seeing, and they can coach the tracking circuits onto the target if required.”

“So if everything works perfectly, they’re bystanders.”

“Yes, sir. And if everything is not working perfectly, they can become vital to getting the director on target.

Without that, of course, we can’t shoot.”

“Well, we could,” interjected the exec. “You can always cancel the designation and then redesignate and hope the second time around it’s more accurate.”

“Yes, sir,” replied Brian, “but that can eat up precious seconds. By the time you recycle the designation, the bad guy can be in your face.”

“Quite,” said the captain. “Now, I suppose you got what you were looking for at mast this morning?”

Brian paused. Here we go. “I want to root out the druggies in my department and get rid of them, so, yTs, sir, Captain, in that sense I got what I wanted. Of course, I would rather not decimate my department to do that.”

The exec snorted. “You more than decimated it. Decimation was killing ten percent. There are only sixteen people in Fox division. Three people, four, if you include Marcowitz, constitute a loss of twenty-five percent.

Who’s the senior guy left now, below the chiefs— Warren?”

Brian took a deep breath. The exec’s tone of voice implied that he, Brian, was somehow responsible for the fact that twenty-five percent of the division did dope.

“Yes, sir. FROM Three Warren.”

The exec shook his head.

“Which one is Warren?” asked the captain.

“He’s the young black E-Four, Captain. He was standing next to the docs this morning. Good kid, but pretty green. There’s no way around it—Fox division is down twenty-five percent, all of it in experienced petty officers.”

Brian decided it was time to speak up. He addressed the captain directly. “Sir, the way I see it, twenty-five percent of the division was dirty. They’re gone now. I’m hoping that’s all, or if it’s not, that the rest of them will stop it, at least while we’re at sea.”

The captain was silent for a long moment. The exec studied his cap, which he had placed on the table and was now turning slowly in his hands.

“Are you aware, Brian, that CTF Seventy-seven’s staff is of the opinion that we in Hood have a fairly significant drug problem? That they have thought all along that the incident on the Sea Dragon operation was caused by drugs? Can you imagine what they’re going to think now?”

Brian decided to hold his ground. “Well, Captain, if twenty-five percent of a division is representative, we do have a big problem here. And I would think that they would think we’re aggressively pursuing illegal drug use in the ship and cleaning house when we find it.” And it was drugs that caused us to lose the load during the gun shoot, he wanted to add.

“Hmmm. Yes, that’s one interpretation, I suppose.”

The exec spoke up. “The other, of course, is that we have had the problem for a long time and not done anything about it, and that now it’s a big-enough deal, we’re losing a quarter of a division at a time when it’s exposed.”

It was Brian’s turn to study the table. He could not state the obvious without bordering on insubordination.

The exec pressed on.

“But as you are aware, I think, we have been doing something about it, something admittedly a bit unorthodox, but nonetheless, an active program that brought direct consequences to anyone caught using drugs aboard the ship. But consequences for the individuals, not for the ship.”

“Yes, sir.”

“And the problem with your putting these men on report is that it invoked the UCMJ and the process of captain’s mast, which carries some consequences for the ship this time. I have no doubt that at least two of these guys will actually be pleased: They get off the ship, get out of the Navy, and get to go home, with maybe a little brig time thrown in. And second, the consequences to the ship are that we’ve lost twenty-five percent of the missile fire-control division, and we now have to shore up the watch organization with quick fixes in the middle of a deployment. And three, Hood gets a black eye.”

Brian remained silent. He wasn’t sure his opinion was being solicited here.

“Well, Brian, you see our problem?” the captain asked.

“No, sir.”

“No, sir?” The exec sounded exasperated.

“May I speak, Captain?”

“Certainly, Mr. Holcomb.” No more Brian, he noticed.

“Sir, my concern is for the ship. I’m the Weapons officer and I’m responsible for making sure the ship’s missiles, guns, and torpedoes are ready when you need them. If up to a quarter or more of the men who actually operate these systems are possibly going to be doped up when we call on them in an emergency, then I can’t deliver.”

He turned to the exec, addressing him directly now.