Trying unsuccessfully to mask his surprise and uncertainty, Margolis continued to stare at Neil.
“Were you on active duty when the war broke out?” he asked.
“No,” Neil answered. “1 resigned my commission in 1975. I haven’t served since.”
“Then what are you doing here?” the lieutenant asked with careful neutrality.
“I served in CPB’s in Vietnam,” Neil said. “I believe I can be of more use on a combat vessel than anyplace else.”
Margolis frowned.
“That’s hardly your decision to make, is it?” he said. “Certainly we have no authorization to take in men… officers… off the street.”
“No doubt,” said Neil. “Still, I imagine this war is going to require quite a bit of improvisation.” Neil could see Margolis was struggling with the paradox of having to address a civilian in canvas shoes who claimed to be his superior officer.
“I’m sorry, Mr. Loken,” Margolis finally said in a cold voice. “We have no authorization to take you on here. You’ll have to leave the ship.”
“May I have permission to speak to your captain?”
“You may not. Escort this man off the ship, Mr. Haynes.”
Discouraged and angry, Neil was led back to the boarding ladder and off the Haig. But in the open dock area he noticed and accosted another lieutenant, and with Mr. Haynes looking on uncertainly, he explained his situation again to this officer.
“The class of ’71, is it?” the officer asked. He was a tired-looking, sloppily dressed man about Neil’s own age who had come from the damaged destroyer.
“Yes, sir,” said Neil. “If you have anyone aboard from ’70, ’71, or ’72 they’ll probably know me… or know of me.”
“Know of you, huh?” the lieutenant said, eyeing Neil speculatively. “Are you famous for something?”
“It was a suggestion,” Neil said, sidestepping the question. “I don’t have my papers with me.”
“There are… were half a dozen Academy boys aboard this ship, but none that I can think of from your time. Maybe Captain Cohen. You know him?”
“No, I don’t.”
“Then you’re out of luck, I guess.”
“Could I see your commanding officer?” Neil persisted.
“I’m afraid Commander Bonnville wouldn’t appreciate being disturbed by something as—”
“Bonnville?” Neil interrupted. “Greg Bonnville?”
“That’s right,” the lieutenant said, looking surprised. “You know him?”
“I served with him for eight months in Nam.”
The lieutenant hesitated, his exhausted face screwed up in a frown.
“Maybe you should see him.”
“I’d like to.”
In ten minutes Neil had been escorted aboard the destroyer Morison. The Morison was a mess. All its topside paint was blistering, its portholes and bridge windows shattered, bloodstains still evident, damaged weapons and debris everywhere. The petty officer who received him aboard looked sick, exhausted, or both. It took almost another ten minutes to make contact with the duty officer and receive permission for him to see Commander Bonnville.
Greg Bonnville had been Neil’s group leader for ten months in the South China Sea off Vietnam. He had been a fierce, dedicated, by-the-book officer who had made Neil for that first year in Vietnam a believer in going by the book. Two years later, when he’d learned that Neil planned to resign his commission, he had telephoned from Manila, where he was then stationed, to urge Neil to change his mind.
As Neil was being taken to the bridge to see him again he felt a pleasant stirring of excitement, which was sickeningly crushed the moment he saw Bonnville.
His friend was only ten years older than Neil, but now he looked twenty. Slumped behind his desk in his cabin, he was gray-faced and hollow-eyed. His formerly eye-catching mane of dark hair was gone; he was almost bald. Scar tissue marred his forehead and one cheek. He trembled when he stood up to greet Neil, his lanky body badly stooped.
“I’m afraid I can’t say welcome aboard, Neil,” Greg Bonnville said. “The Morison is a deathship.”
Neil stood facing his friend uncertainly. Greg’s quarters were strewn with clothes, books, and papers. The ship’s logbook lay on the floor, propped up against one leg of the desk. Greg sat back down with a groan.
“What happened?” Neil asked.
“Wrong war,” Greg answered gloomily, not looking up. “We were steaming south fifteen miles off Cape Henry, probably thirty from Hampton Roads, when boom, we got… permanently decommissioned.”
“Did you… personally get hit?”
“I look it, don’t I?” he replied. “I got some mild burns and cuts from the initial blast, but it was the radiation all that morning that clobbered us. The only men who might come out of this all right are the engine-room crew. Anyone who had to be out on deck or on the bridge that night is probably… not going to make it.”
“Including you?” Neil asked softly.
“Obviously including me.”
Neil turned and paced over to the shattered porthole and stared out over the waters of the turning basin toward the ocean.
“Is the ship still contaminated?” Neil asked quietly.
“It’s pretty clean except in the aft hold, which we’ve closed off,” he said. “They almost wouldn’t let us put in here till they got their own geiger counter man aboard and cleared us.”
“May I sit down?” Neil asked.
“Please,” Greg responded. “You make me sad standing up so straight.” Neil sat down on the edge of Greg’s berth. “What are your orders?” he asked hesitantly.
Greg looked up blankly and then snickered. “Stay here and die.”
“You’re kidding.”
“Absolutely not. And damn good orders they are. This ship is dead, and the engine-room crew has been transferred to the Haig. The rest of us will stay by ourselves with our little individual time-bombs. Whoever can walk off in a week will be reassigned.”
“Living Jesus,” Neil muttered.
“Quite an end to a distinguished career.”
“There’s nothing you can do?” Neil asked, looking up at his friend as if he were appealing for himself.
“Remain on standby and if, by some miraculous stroke of luck, a Soviet sub should amble up the Morehead City inlet, go down with my ship.”
“I see,” said Neil, getting up and walking back over to the porthole, where pieces of shattered glass were resting like a cache of diamonds on the circular sill. “Look, Greg,” he went on, turning back to his friend, who was slumped forward at his desk, staring down. “What do you know about the overall military situation?”
Greg lifted his head, and the two men gazed at each other.
“All I know is what I can read between the lines of the radio communiques and orders.”
“That’s something,” said Neil. “What do you think?”
“I think we’re planning to evacuate all remaining naval personnel from the whole East Coast. I think it’s rapidly becoming a war of individual initiative, just the kind we always wished we could be in.”
“But where’s the enemy?”
“Ahh,” said Greg, straightening up with a grimace. “That’s the new twist. The enemy is in the sky, in the food chain, in the rain, in my bloodstream.”
“And the Russians?”
“They’ve shot their bolt,” he said. “There’ve only been two or three incoming missiles since the second day. Their Mediterranean and Indian Ocean fleets are gone. Their population has been decimated. Whatever fighting’s still going on is nothing more than the last twitching of two corpses. The Russians and us will probably both be fantasizing to our last breaths that we’re just about to snatch victory from the jaws of mutual destruction.”