He sighed. "Some rough seas, sir. Every marriage has them." He wondered what Rebecca had told her father.
"I know. But… this new command is going to take you back out to sea, son. And the word is, it'll be soon."
Gordon's eyes widened at that. "What?… "
"At this time, no comment. But break it to her gently, son."
"Aye aye, sir."
He snapped his briefcase shut. "Okay. I gotta make tracks." He extended a gnarled hand. "Good luck, son."
Gordon shook the hand. "Thank you, sir. Thank you for everything."
It wasn't until some minutes after Goldman had left that Frank Gordon thought of something else. These orders had been written two weeks before. Why had Admiral Goldman taken him into the Pentagon subbasement to watch the SEAL op in Lebanon that night? To teach him the seriousness of command responsibility?
Or to prove something more, something deeper, a something as deep and as cold as the depths of the Marianas Trench?
"Damn you, Ben Goldman," he whispered.
7
The eerie shrill of a boatswain's pipe ululated through the Pittsburgh's compartments from the bulkhead speakers, the final quaver dying away as LCDR Latham's voice came on. "Now starboard liberty section, muster on deck. That is, starboard liberty section, muster on deck. Port section, now sweepers man your brooms. Clean sweep-down, fore and aft. The smoking lamp is lit in all authorized compartments."
"Liberty!" BM1 Scobey exclaimed, giving his neckerchief's square knot a final tighten and tug. "Man, they're playin' my song!"
"Yeah, but it ain't Honolulu, man," TM2 Benson replied. He was taking a rag to his Korfam dress shoes, bringing them to their accustomed mirror polish.
"Nothing's like Honolulu, Rog," BM1 Archie Douglas said, grinning. "And promises in the Navy are just about worth the cost of the teletype flimsies they're printed on. Get used to it!"
The crew compartment was crowded, the narrow passageway elbow-to-dress-whites-elbow with enlisted men preparing to go ashore. Scobey lowered his locker lid, which included the thin mattress and made-up sheets and blanket of his rack. Each man slept atop his own locker, a space only six inches deep, in which he kept his uniforms and few personal possessions during his enforced incarceration on board. The racks were stacked three high, each six feet long, three feet wide, and with twenty-four narrow inches between the top of the mattress and the bottom of the next rack above, a coffinlike space with the single virtue that each man could draw a set of curtains to provide a cloth-thin illusion of privacy when in his rack.
"It ain't right, though," Benson continued. "Promising us palm trees and hula girls, and sending us here!"
"Word is we'll be home-ported in San Diego soon enough," Douglas said cheerfully.
"Yeah," ET2 Jim Jablonski said. "Ballast Point isn't so bad. In fact, it's prime duty!"
"But it ain't Pearl Harbor, man," Benson said mournfully. "It ain't Honolulu."
"Will someone shut the damned broken record player off?" TM2 Mark Doershner said from a nearby rack. "It's fuckin' gratin' on me like fingernails on the blackboard, y'know?"
"Let's get topside," Douglas told them. "This is one liberty call I don't intend to miss!"
Dress white uniforms spotlessly resplendent, they trooped aft and up the gangway to the first deck, then up the ladder to emerge from the forward escape hatch just abaft the sail. It was warm topside, but with a leaden, overcast sky and the strong promise of rain. Afternoon in early July in San Francisco's northern Bay Area could be blistering hot, but a thunderstorm earlier that afternoon had cooled things down. Steam was rising in the damp air from the Pittsburgh's deck, and from the pier alongside.
"Fall in for muster," Master Chief Fred Warren, the Chief of the Boat bawled. The crewmen lined up in two ranks, and Warren began calling off their names. The liberty inspection that followed was cursory and impersonal, as Lieutenant Commander Latham and Master Chief Warren walked swiftly up and down the two ranks, noting a couple of too-long haircuts and pointing out to RM3 Sanders that he had a rust spot on the sleeve of his jumper.
After that, the men were dismissed, filing down the gangway already rigged aft of Pittsburgh's sail, and onto the pier. A number of civilians had gathered behind a roped-off area just off the dock… mostly women and kids. As the sailors trooped up the pier, more than one began jogging, and before long, the civilians were forcing their way past the rope barrier and racing down the dockside toward their men.
"Must be nice to have that waitin' for you, huh?" Scobey said, laughing, as one tall, leggy, auburn-haired woman threw herself into Seaman Hutchison's arms.
Another girl raced toward ST3 Kellerman, shrilling something that sounded like "Squeeee… " at the top of her lungs. Kellerman scooped her up and spun her around, as she wrapped her short-skirted legs around his back.
"Hey, you two!" Douglas called out. "Get yourselves a room!"
"Don't worry!" Kellerman said, grinning. "We will. Boys, this is my fiancee, Loni Dayton."
"Nice to meet you," Douglas said, ignoring the fact that she was still glued to the front of Kellerman's white jumper, arms and legs wrapped tightly around his back.
"What the hell does 'squee' mean?" Boyce asked.
Loni shook her head, clearing away a stray strand of blond hair. "Squee," she said, is not just a word. It is a state of mind. You can squee when you're happy… or go into a major squeeee when you finally see someone you haven't seen in entirely too long!.. "
"Squee, huh?" Benson said.
"Okay, Squee" Scobey said, tapping Kellerman on the arm. "You two wanna come with us into town?"
"No thanks, Big C," Kellerman said. "We've got things to do…. "
"He'd just cramp our style," Douglas added, grinning. "Have fun, you two!"
"Man, it must be nice," Benson said, watching Kellerman and Loni walk away, arms locked about one another.
"Ahh," Scobey said with a sneer, "if the Navy had wanted you to have a wife, they would've issued you one with your seabag! Let's go!"
A Navy liberty bus was waiting near the dock to take them across the G-Street Bridge and into town.
Twenty minutes later, Benson, Scobey, Boyce, Jablonski, and Douglas were walking down Trinity Street in Vallejo, looking at the flickering marquee lights, the tawdry buildings, the signs proclaiming tattoos, massages, uniform alterations, dry-cleaning services, food, alcohol, and various other forms of entertainment, all aimed at the Navy enlisted man freshly back from weeks or months at sea.
"So, where's the action in this town?" Benson wanted to know.
"You've never been to Mare Island?" Douglas asked.
"Never. I was with SUBRON 5, in San Diego."
"Well, there's the Wakky Key Club, over on Marin Drive," Scobey said with a broad grin. "It's a strip club, see, and the girls there are so—"
"Hey, hey!" Douglas said. "You're crazy! The Wakky's in
Honolulu!"
"Honolulu!" Benson wailed.
"Yeah, I just wanted Rog to know what he was missing!"
"Actually," Douglas said, "there's nothing to do in Vallejo. No girls."
"No booze," Benson chimed in.
"No pussy," Jablonski said.
"No food," Boyce added, catching on to the game.
"Not much of anything, actually," Scobey said. "I think it's a conspiracy. Probably has to do with Russian spies in the area. The government doesn't want the Russkis to find places where they can lead innocents like us astray."