“Nancy, listen to yourself. You talk that way when the psychiatrist comes to see you, and they’ll ship you down to the psych ward at Balboa Naval Hospital.”
“Hell yes, lock me up and throw away the fucking key. Sounds about right. You have a nice day, too, fucking Boatswain’s Mate First Class Senior Chief Dobler. I’m going to take a nap. Maybe I’ll dream I’m half normal. Hell yes, a nap. Best idea I’ve had all day.”
Nancy Dobler turned her back to him. She would be sleeping in a minute or two. He’d seen her do it a hundred times. He looked at his watch. Fourteen-thirty. Chuck and Helen would be coming home soon from school. No, this was Wednesday, that was cheerleader’s practice. Chuck then. He had to figure out someplace for them to stay. Who this time? He’d been using up his welcome at some of his friends there in Coronado.
Mrs. Fernandez. Miguel’s wife? A chance. He didn’t know them well but had met them at a platoon fish fry last month. Could he ask her? He didn’t know of anyone else. He drove home and called the base and talked to Miguel.
“That’s the story, Miguel. My wife will be in the hospital for two or three days, and I’m in real need.”
“Senior Chief, no sweat. Hey, you bring the kids over after school and with clothes for school and books and Maria can be there for them for as long as it takes. She’s good with kids. Linda will love having a brother and sister. I’ll call Maria and tell her you’re coming.”
“I owe you, man.”
“No sweat. Just take care of your wife, Nancy, wasn’t it? Just get her well, that’s the important thing.”
With that settled, Dobler checked the apartment. He found the blood in the kitchen and a trail into the living room and a dark red splotch on the rug where she must have fallen. The empty bottle of sleeping pills lay on the kitchen counter.
He tried not to think about it as he scrubbed up the blood. He never did get it all out of the carpet. How many times? He shook his head, remembering. Four, this was at least the fourth time. Her mother told him she had tried twice in high school, but no one knew if she was really serious or just trying to get attention. It got her attention, all right.
Was that still the problem? He spent too much time with the Navy and not enough time with her and the kids? Might be. Maybe he did need some counseling after all. Marriage counseling. That might help. At once he knew that she would never agree to it. She had told him many times before that she would never allow a shrink to dig into her brain.
It had been three years this time. Chuck wouldn’t remember the last time, but Dobler was afraid that Helen would.
“Your mother’s in the hospital and will be there for two or three days.” He told them when they both came home.
“Why?” Chuck asked.
“She hurt herself. She’ll recover and be just fine.”
Helen looked at him, and when Chuck went to play with his computer, she asked him.
“Again, Dad?”
“Yes, but don’t tell Chuck. He doesn’t need to know.”
“Why does she do it?”
“I don’t know. If I knew, I’d figure out some way to keep her happy.”
“Hey, Dad. Don’t even think about quitting the Navy. It’s not that. You said she did it twice back in high school. It’s not the Navy.”
The kids were Navy. They adapted easily to new situations, new schools, new friends. They fit in nicely at the Fernandez place, and Maria and little Linda couldn’t have been nicer.
That night, as Senior Chief Dobler tried to get to sleep back at his apartment, he wondered if his wife’s troubles really were his being in the Navy. The Navy was a jealous mistress. Almost always she won. If the time came just right, he might have a talk with Commander Murdock. That was an option he’d think about.
He turned over and fluffed his pillow. Hell no, it couldn’t be the Navy. Still, he wondered.
5
All sixteen SEALs from Team Seven, Third Platoon, took turns with the Bull Pup rifle that afternoon at the pit down the Silver Strand toward Imperial Beach. The pit was where they used explosives in early Tadpole training and fired weapons there against the twenty-foot-high sand dune that bulldozers had piled up.
Murdock fired the 5.56 barrel in two-shot bursts. He held the weapon away from him and looked it over again, then pounded off four rounds. He turned the Bull Pup and aimed it down the beach at a file of SEAL Tadpoles packing a twenty-foot-long telephone pole. He touched the laser and saw through the six-power scope where the red spot touched the first SEAL.
“See the red spot?” DeWitt asked.
Murdock said he did.
“Right now, the chip is determining the range and figuring how many revolutions it takes the twenty-millimeters round to get to that point. Faster than we can say it, the device sets the fuze for an airburst before you would have had time to pull the trigger.”
“Nice,” Murdock said. “Nice. I like it. How many Colt carbines we usually carry?”
“Five, sometimes six.”
“What would you think of trading in the Colts for five of these Bull Pups?”
DeWitt frowned. “Maybe. I’d want to see how they hold up in the field. We need a good three-day exercise with them and with live ammo for the twenty.”
“Good. We’ll also see what a little bit of rain and mud does to it. Remember how the first-issue M-16 rifles jammed? We don’t want this one if it does that, even once. A jam could mean a dead SEAL.”
“Amen to that. I’ll give Stroh a call and see if he can shake loose that ammo any sooner.”
“Go,” Murdock said. “You need the road work, anyway.”
DeWitt grinned, turned away, and took off at a six-minute-per-mile pace, heading north along the wet sand toward the SEAL HQ.
When all of the SEALs had fired the Bull Pup in the five-five-six mode, Murdock had them use the scope and the sights and the laser.
“Damn, if that works out to a thousand yards, we can cut hell out of a lot of the bad guys,” Jaybird said. He handed the Bull Pup to the next man.
“Yeah, I like the feel of him when he’s chunking off those two-round bursts,” Harry Ronson said. “Seems solid, like it can do the job and get me home.”
Twenty minutes later, they headed back. Jaybird carried the Bull Pup.
“This thing have an official name yet?” Ron Holt asked.
“Only thing I saw in the literature that came with it was that the army put out bids for an ‘objective individual combat weapon,’ ” Murdock said. “They called it the OICW, which for sure isn’t what we’re going to call it. A writer in National Defense magazine called the weapon a Bull Pup, and the name might stick.”
They slogged through the sand at a seven-minutes-to-the-mile pace on the three-mile run back to their quarters.
DeWitt was on the phone when Murdock came into his office.
“Yeah, sure, Don. We understand. We just want you to jack them boys up and send us some demo rounds so we can test this bird on more than the five-five-six NATO.”
DeWitt listened for a minute.
“That’s a roger, Don. Fact is, he just huffed and puffed in from a jog in the sand. Do you have an appointment?”
DeWitt laughed and handed the set to Murdock.
“Hey, slick, what’s happening?” Murdock asked.
“Nothing right now, but we’ve got a move under way, and we want you and your platoon involved. Could be pretty hairy, and you better brush up on your Spanish.”
“We can do that. What about the twenty-mike-mike?”
“They want to do some testing themselves. I’ll see what I can do. How many rounds do you need?