Operation Fireball (9 page)

He pulled a box from under a bench, ripped it open, and took out a headset with large, foam-rubber-cushioned cups covering the earphones. He plugged the jack into a receptacle on the receiver panel and moved a two-way switch next to it from speaker to phone position. The room became quiet.

Hazel put on the headset, adjusted the earphones for comfort, and depressed a channel button. She tilted her head slightly, then reached forward and turned a control knob. She took off the headset and handed it to me. When I held it to one ear, liquid-sounding Spanish syllables crackled clearly.

“Fine,” Erikson repeated after he had also listened for a moment. “That’s all for tonight,” he added to Hazel. “We’ll be upstairs in a little bit.”

In the instant Erikson leaned forward to turn off the radio, Hazel made a face to me to indicate her opinion of her abrupt dismissal, but she left the storeroom. “We’ll all go out on the
Calypso
in the morning, except Hazel. Wilson will take us to a quiet area where we can practice boarding from rubber life rafts. Now let’s go up to. my room. I want to give you all copies of a Navy Training Pamphlet called “The Bluejacket’s Manual.” And I want you all to study it. You’ll have to act like white hats aboard the destroyer that takes us to Guantanamo. I also want to show you a detailed map of Cuba and mark a point where I feel—”

There was a loud thump above our heads, followed by scuffling noises. Another thump sounded. Erikson and I jammed together in the storeroom doorway trying to get through it at the same time. We wriggled free, ran for the stairs, and sprinted up them. Erikson beat me to the door of Hazel’s and my room. He stopped inside it, his bulk blocking my vision partly, but I could see the essentials.

Chico Wilson had returned from the
Calypso
. He was struggling to get to his feet, a look of incredulous disbelief on his handsome features. Hazel stood to one side. The print of her knuckles stood out starkly on Wilson’s tanned jawline. “You bitch!” he rasped as he bounded to his feet. He started toward her. Erikson moved forward like a big cat, but Hazel was quicker. She took two steps and then planted the toe of her cowboy boot squarely in Wilson’s shin like Jan Stenerud kicking a fifty-yard field goal. Wilson’s head flew back until he was staring at the ceiling, his face screwed up in pain. He collapsed slowly upon himself until he ended up sitting on the floor with both hands clasping the wounded shin.

“Wassamatter?” a husky voice said from behind me. I turned. Slater was standing there in his underwear, glassy-eyed. In his right hand he held the biggest pistol I’d ever seen. Both hand and pistol were shaking. “Cops?” he demanded.

Inside the room, Erikson leaned down and took hold of Wilson by one arm. He jerked him to his feet and thrust him at the door. Slater and I barely cleared the entrance in time for Wilson to be propelled through it. He didn’t even look around. He kept right on going to his own room.

“Oh, it’s jus’ lover boy,” Slater said. He attempted to put the pistol into his belt, realized he had no belt, stared at the pistol for a moment, and then clamped it under his armpit. His hand continued to shake. “ ‘Night,” he said with an attempt at jauntiness, and went down the corridor.

I was looking at Wilson’s door when Erikson came out into the hall. “Stay away from him,” Erikson ordered.

Some of my inarticulate rage transferred itself to the big blond man. Who the hell did he think he was? “Don’t try to tell—”

“Simmer down,” his hard voice overrode mine. “There’s too much at stake.”

When I could think, I couldn’t argue with the statement.

Neither Hazel nor I referred to the incident while we undressed and went to bed. While I waited for her to fall asleep, I remade a resolution I had made previously and done nothing about. When everything was quiet, I eased out of bed and went over to the bureau. I laid out my loosest-fitting sport shirt for the morning, and under it I placed my shoulder holster and .38.

The next time Chico Wilson got that far out of line around me, I intended to be in a position to do something about it.

• • •

It was a silent crew that boarded the
Calypso
in the morning. As usual, we went aboard at intervals. Wilson took the
Calypso
to a deserted spit of land and anchored. For two hours in the broiling sun we practiced boarding the cruiser from collapsible rubber life rafts. It was hot, tedious, exhausting work. Everyone had the disposition of a snapping turtle by the time we began the run back to Key West.

Erikson took the wheel. Wilson slumped down upon a coil of rope. Slater brushed against me as he attempted to move past. He turned his head, and I knew he had felt the outline of the holster and .38 under my sport shirt. He went to an iced-down chest, opened it, and took out a can of beer.

He drained the can in one long swallow, held out the empty can in my direction, and looked at me quizzically. “Come on, Wild Bill,” he said. “Show us how you used to do it when the buffalo was a-stampedin’ across the plains.” He lobbed the empty beer can over the side in a long, lazy arc. “What’s the matter?” he said when I made no move. “Savin’ ammunition?”

He took out another can of beer. It took him two swallows for that one. He held it out toward me wordlessly, then feinted throwing it. The ocean was flat calm and there wasn’t another boat in sight. I moved up to the rail, unbuttoned the top two buttons on my shirt, and drew the .38.

Slater grinned. He threw the can in the same rainbow trajectory. The third slug from the .38 bounced the can skyward. Slater threw a full can. That one almost reached the water before my last bullet drove it downward into the top of a wave. I reloaded while Slater picked up another can. When he threw it, the first bullet jerked the can sideways while it was still on its way up.

I reholstered the Smith & Wesson and stepped back from the rail. Chico Wilson was staring at the stretch of ocean where the beer cans had disappeared. At the wheel Erikson displayed no emotion on his rugged features. Slater chuckled aloud as he opened another can of beer. “Ol’ Wild Bill has still got it,” he pronounced, and held the beer can aloft in a salute.

The
Calypso
knifed steadily through the blue-green water.

Showboating isn’t my style, but I had a feeling that Hazel wouldn’t have as much trouble with Wilson again.

SLATER CALLED
me into his room that night.

On the boat that morning he had seemed more relaxed, but I had seen him earlier in the evening downstairs at The Castaways, staring down into his glass of beer. “Ever get the feelin’ you’re losin’ your nerve?” he began abruptly.

“I’ve had the feeling.”

He hadn’t expected an answer. He was wrapped in his own feelings. “This last bit did somethin’ to me, Drake. I can’t seem to get myself screwed down. Or geared up, or whatever you want to call it. I don’t seem to want to—” He didn’t finish.

“It wears off,” I said, trying to soothe him.

“It had better.” His tone was savage. “I don’t like the way I feel right now. When I laid this job out to Erikson, I thought it would be a piece of cake. Now—”

Again he left the thought dangling. He lit a cigarette, studied its burning end, and changed position in his chair. “I been wantin’ to talk to you, anyway,” he resumed. “About our little project.”

“Yes?”

“A four-way split plus a percentage to Redmond, the cruiser first mate, really thins out the gravy.” He waited to be sure that I had taken in what he said. “A two-way split’d be a lot better, wouldn’t it?”

I wondered if he had made the same proposition already to Chico Wilson. They hadn’t seemed friendly, but they were certainly birds that flocked together naturally. “You mean you and I?”

“That’s what I mean.”

“How?”

He waved a hand. “Long as we understand each other, it shouldn’t be hard to work out,” he said vaguely. “Accidents happen.” He grinned, displaying his strong-looking teeth. “Think it over.”

“I will.”

“An’ don’t stop at thinkin'. We could—”

There was a knock at the door. After a moment it opened and Erikson thrust in his head. “Meeting in my room right away,” he said, and disappeared again.

“King of the mountain,” Slater snorted, but he got to his feet.

We went down the hall together. Wilson and Erikson were already in the room. “The destroyer sails tomorrow at seventeen hundred hours,” Erikson said when I closed the door. “That’s five
P.M
. to you.” He was looking at Slater. “Although I suppose you’ve been studying your ‘Bluejacket’s Manual.’ ”

Slater kept quiet and Erikson went on to make a quick run-through of our schedule. He didn’t say anything he hadn’t said before, but this time it had an air of immediacy. Afterward he and Wilson got into a technical discussion I couldn’t follow. The handsome Chico seemed recovered from his previous subdued demeanor.

A weather map was pinned on a wall. “It may be early for the hurricane season,” Wilson argued, “but this pressure system makin’ up down here looks like trouble.” His finger was on the map at a point three or four hundred miles south of Bermuda. “What do we do if it develops into a real storm?”

“Tell your man Redmond we’ll wait in Havana for the right conditions,” Erikson said. “He won’t have to risk the
Calypso
or himself. We know now that the radio channel is clear, so we won’t have any difficulty in getting the shortwave signal to Hazel. Put your name in your room here and tell him not to get too far away from it. Depending upon conditions, we might signal for him in three days or it could be seven or eight. Any questions?”

There were none, and the meeting broke up.

I went across the hall, undressed, and stretched out on the bed. It was about an hour before Hazel came upstairs after putting in her trick at the shortwave radio set. “The balloon goes up tomorrow,” I told her when she entered our bedroom.

“He told me,” she said. She sat down on the bed beside me. “Up to now it seemed as if we were playing a game.”

“Up to tomorrow,” I corrected her.

She didn’t reply.

She smoked a cigarette, took a shower, and came to bed.

It seemed to me she held me more tightly that night than during all our previous lovemaking at The Castaways.

• • •

We were ready at four thirty the next afternoon. Hazel and I had said our good-byes previously. Erikson had spent the afternoon packing and repacking the gear in our seabags. When the time came to leave in the summoned taxi, he handed me the bag with the Navy fatigues and Cuban uniforms. We were in whites. Wilson and Slater had heavier seabags, plus each had one of the small crates to carry.

It was only an eight-block ride to the front gate of the Key West Naval Station. We piled out of the cab with Erikson in the lead. He returned the Marine guard’s salute, then disappeared into the building housing the Officer of the Day. We waited on the sidewalk.

In five minutes he came out again. Two minutes later we boarded a gray bus that used the main gate as a turnaround point. It made a circuitous route through the base. We stopped at the commissary, ship’s store, CPO Club, hospital, and three barracks. I was surprised at the number of navy wives and civilians.

The bus finally made a straight run along a line of warehouses and entered the dock area. Erikson again showed the forged naval orders, this time to a guard manning the gate. He received a spit-and-polish salute and stepped smartly down the wharf with the rest of us in trail. I could see that Slater was making heavy weather of it with his seabag in his left hand and a crate cocked awkwardly on his right shoulder. Wilson moved easily under the same load. I brought up the rear, perspiring in the tight-fitting dress whites. No one paid any attention to us.

We boarded the destroyer, going up the sloping gangplank in Erikson’s wake. Although I’d read and practiced the protocol, I didn’t feel too confident in employing it. I remembered to keep my thumb in and my elbow out when I saluted the O.D. standing next to the rail. I made a quarter-turn to repeat the salute to the flag hanging limply at the stern. I was surprised at how impressive the brief ceremony was.

Erikson had warned us that he had to confine most of his activity to officers’ quarters and that he couldn’t be with us. Amidships in the narrow waist of the destroyer he turned us over to a rating, who led us below to the crew’s quarters. Vibrations rippled through the steel ladder we descended as the ship’s engines turned over.

It had been hot abovedecks. It was hotter below. The neat bunks against the steel walls in the cramped space of the quarters reminded me too much of the prison hospital in Florida. From the expression on Slater’s face, he had his own memories. Underfoot, the vibrations in the steel deck increased. A bobbing and yawing motion indicated that we were under way.

We were alone when the rating left us. Every member of the crew evidently had a job to do while the destroyer was getting under way. Slater kicked his bulging seabag to one side and sat down on a bunk. There was a clatter on the sloping steel ladder leading down to our level, and I turned to see a pair of highly polished black shoes descending it. Legs thickened into heavy thighs followed by a rotund torso encased in a jacket with three rows of multicolored ribbons over the left chest pocket.

The stripes around the sleeve cuff that would indicate that our visitor was an officer were missing, but one sleeve between wrist and elbow carried a slanting row of gold service stripes. “Chief petty officer!” Wilson hissed. “Don’t salute!” He kicked Slater on the leg, motioning for him to stand. Slater responded but slowly. His lethargic reaction wasn’t missed by the small, dark eyes in the CPO’s weather-beaten face.

“So you’re the sandbaggers we’re ferrying down to Gitmo,” the CPO said. His tone indicated that he felt no enthusiasm for the chore. He reached for Slater’s arm and took hold of it, turning the wrist. “If you’re going to report in these whites, you’d better stow them before you look like grease monkeys.” He pointed to a smudge of dirt on Slater’s jumper sleeve. “Break out your work clothes.”

“Aye, aye, Chief,” Wilson said quickly before Slater could reply.

“And don’t get underfoot,” the chief continued. He went down the passageway and disappeared through a bulkhead at the far end.

Slater glared after him. “What’s the matter with
him
?” he growled. He transferred his attention to Wilson. “ ‘Aye, aye, Chief,’ “ he mimicked.

“Shape up,” Wilson warned. “Our travel orders list us as technical personnel, and old line Navy chiefs don’t think too much of ratings who haven’t earned their rank on sea duty.” He opened his white canvas seabag and pulled out the dungarees Erikson had rolled up for us in neat Navy style.

We all changed. “I’m goin’ on deck,” Slater declared when he had stowed his whites. “This place gives me the gallopin’ jumps.”

I was glad when Wilson raised no objection. The cell-like confinement in the crew’s quarters raised my own hackles. I followed Slater and Wilson topside. I thought the decks would be crowded with sailors, but they were bare. I realized that each crew member undoubtedly had a duty station during the initial getting-under-way maneuvers.

I looked back over the stern. Key West was only a blue blur on the horizon. The sky had a brassy look. There was an oily-looking swell, but the destroyer knifed through it with only a slight increase in the yawing motion. Wilson moved to the rail and stood staring out over the water toward the descending sun. Slater selected a loading hatch amidships and seated himself on the gray-painted canvas cover. The cool sea breeze felt welcome on my perspiring features.

I wondered what lay ahead of us on Guantanamo. Although Erikson had been specific about most other aspects of the job, he had shrugged off questions about the naval base. “Just do as you’re told when we get there,” was the sum total of his replies. I hoped he wasn’t playing it by ear. Everything I’d read about Guantanamo indicated that it was a fortress, and it wouldn’t make much difference that we were trying to get out rather than in.

A movement by Slater caught my eye. He had drawn a flat, pint bottle from the waistband of his fatigues. The bottle’s contents glinted amber. Slater glanced up and down the deck, then tilted the bottle quickly. He swallowed twice before recapping it and shoving it back inside his waistband.

I sidled over to him. “That’s stupid, Slater. You want to blow the whole bit?”

His frown drove his heavy brows into a shallow V. “Bug off,” he warned. As if to show me he meant business, he jerked the bottle out again, slipped the cap, and let half a dozen ounces gurgle down his throat. I moved closer, trying to shield him.

“SLATER!!” It was a full-throated roar from above us in Erikson’s brass-bellow. Both our heads swiveled upward. Erikson was standing against the rail on an upper deck just below the bridge, staring down at us. He disappeared only to show up seconds later right beside us. “Give me that!” he demanded peremptorily. “And get on your feet when an officer addresses you!”

“Stuff it!” Slater rasped. His eyes were bloodshot, and I wondered how long he’d been sucking on the bottle before I noticed him.

Erikson grabbed for the bottle, which was partially concealed in Slater’s hand. Slater wrenched his hand away. All we needed was for the booze to smash on the deck. Then Slater’s seabag would be turned inside out, and liquor would be the least of the incriminating evidence found.

Erikson snatched the bottle from Slater on his second lunge. He handed it to me just as the same chief who had dressed us down below appeared. “Trouble, sir?” the chief asked Erikson.

“No trouble, Chief,” Erikson said. “Except that this man isn’t feeling well. I think he ought to go below and remain in his bunk.”

“Yes, sir,” the CPO said blandly. “He’s one of your detachment, isn’t he, sir? If you like, I can arrange to have him admitted to sick bay.”

Slater hadn’t seen where the bottle went. He thought Erikson still had it. While talking to the chief, Erikson had positioned himself so that his body shielded Slater from the chief’s eyes. Slater seized Erikson’s arm and spun him into the chief. “You give that back to me!” he shouted. “Goddamn it, I’ll—”

“Watch your language when you’re speaking to an officer!” The chief’s foghorn voice drowned out Slater’s. I held my breath as I saw Slater gather himself. The chief saw it, too. “Ten-shun!” he barked.

Slater left-hooked the chief at the beltline. The stocky CPO sank slowly to his knees. His bulging eyes expressed incredulity that a rating with as many years service as Slater presumably had could react in such a manner.

It seemed to me that the chief’s knees no sooner hit the deck than we were surrounded by young sailors. Bursting through them came a slender officer with two stripes on his sleeve and a blue band around his upper arm with the white initials O.D. on it. “Break it up!” he ordered the sailors briskly. “Back to duty stations!” They melted away. “I’ll handle this, Commander,” the officer continued to Erikson. He raised a hand, and two burly-looking sailors appeared out of nowhere. They each took an arm of Slater and unceremoniously dragged him away. I was relieved to see that he wasn’t fighting them much. Evidently the shock of what he’d done had finally reached his liquor-fired brain.

While Erikson was helping the chief to his feet with the assistance of the O.D., I edged to the rail and dropped the almost empty pint bottle over the side. “Either one of you can prefer charges,” the O.D. was saying crisply. “The simplest way would be for me to take a statement from Chief McMillan here and have it sent to the provost marshal at the base for further action.”

“I’m sorry this incident occurred, Lieutenant,” Erikson apologized. “Especially since this man is in my charge. He was assigned to me only a week ago, and I didn’t realize he was so unstable. You can be sure that I’ll follow up with the proper course of action.”

The O.D. saluted smartly and went back amidships. The chief walked away, still slightly doubled over but ignoring proffered assistance from Erikson. Chico Wilson had been hovering unobtrusively in the background, and Erikson motioned for him to join us. I had never seen Wilson look so upset. “You think it’s smart to stand out here an’ talk?” he asked.

I had almost asked the same question myself. I felt as though a hundred pairs of unseen eyes were upon us, all disapproving.

“It would look more odd if I didn’t speak to you after what happened,” Erikson said tightly. “You men are under my jurisdiction, and for the next five minutes anyone watching us will naturally assume I’m giving you the rules of the road regarding your future conduct aboard ship. So look alert. Pull back those shoulders.”