“Way to go, Pat!” Sam Carsten held out his hand. “I knew you’d do it. Now get out there and give ’em hell.”
“Thank you, sir.” The exec shook the proffered hand.
“You don’t call me sir any more. I call you sir now…sir,” Sam said. Cooley was getting his own ship, and getting promoted away from the Josephus Daniels. He hadn’t yet put on his oak leaves or sewn the thin gold stripe that transformed him from lieutenant to lieutenant commander onto each sleeve, but he had the rank even without its trappings.
Rank or no rank, he shook his head. “Doesn’t seem right. It isn’t right, dammit. You’ve taught me so much…”
“My ass,” Carsten said like the old CPO he was. “You knew more than I did when I got here. Now you know a lot more than I do, and the Navy Department’s finally figured it out. We both knew this day was coming. You’re headed for the top, and I’m doing the best job I know how, and that’s the way it ought to be.”
“You ought to have a carrier, not a destroyer escort,” Cooley blurted.
“What the hell would I do with a carrier? Run it on the rocks, that’s what.” Sam had to belittle that; he didn’t want to-he didn’t dare-admit how much he wanted it. He thought he knew what to do. He’d spent enough time aboard the Remembrance, first as a rating and then as an officer. But even the baby flattops they were cranking out now had three-stripers in command, and he knew he’d be lucky if he ever made two and a half. He was damn lucky to have made a lieutenant’s two.
“You could swing it,” Pat Cooley said. “You can handle men. You know guns. You know damage control. For everything else”-he winked-“you could lean on your exec till you got the hang of it.”
Sam laughed. “You remember to lean on yours,” he said. “You’re the Old Man now. You’re the good guy, the mild guy. Let him be the professional son of a bitch. That’s his job. It’s not yours any more.”
“I won’t forget.” Cooley slung his duffel over his shoulder.
As he walked off the deck and onto the gangplank that led to the Boston Navy Yard, the crew called out good luck and good wishes to him. Cooley waved and grinned. He hadn’t been an out-and-out Tartar, the way a lot of execs were. The sailors might not love him, but they did respect him.
“Wonder who we’ll get now,” one grizzled petty officer said to another.
“Some hotshot who shaves once a week,” the other CPO predicted. “Well, we’ll break him in, by God.”
“Yeah, we’ll-” The first chief noticed Sam listening and shut up with a snap.
“I know what you guys will do,” Sam said, holding in a smile. “Remember, I’ve done it myself. If you don’t ride the guy too hard, everything’ll be jake.”
“Sometimes we forget you’re a mustang, sir,” the first chief said sheepishly. “You just act like an officer, you know?”
Was that a compliment or an insult? Sam didn’t try to parse it. With a snort, he said, “Yeah, like the oldest goddamn lieutenant in the U.S. Navy. If I’m not a mustang, I’m a screwup. Better for the ship if I came up the hawser.”
Those were the magic words. If something was good for the ship, nobody would say a word about it. The two chiefs didn’t hang around, though. They went off someplace where they could slander the outgoing and incoming execs-and probably the skipper, too-without getting overheard.
As for Sam, he walked back to his cramped cabin and wrestled with the ship’s accounts. After a spell in combat, you could always write some things off as lost in action, which simplified your life. He thought about keeping accounts for an airplane carrier. That almost made him decide not to touch the job with an eleven-foot bohunk, which was what you used when a ten-foot Pole wouldn’t reach. But if he ever got the chance, he knew he would leap at it.
He laughed, but he was angry, too. Pat Cooley had given him a new itch, even if it was one he didn’t think he’d ever be able to scratch.
More shells and small-arms ammunition came aboard. So did all kinds of galley supplies. The ship got refueled, too, and he had to sign off on everything. One of these days, if the Josephus Daniels didn’t get sunk under him, he’d have to turn her over to somebody else, and he wanted the books to balance, or at least get within shouting distance of balancing, when he did.
The new exec came aboard the next day. Lieutenant Myron Zwilling couldn’t have been more different from Pat Cooley had he tried for a week. He was short and squat and dark. He was also fussily precise; if he had a sense of humor, he kept it so well hidden, even he didn’t know where it was. He stared at Sam’s right hand.
A glance at Zwilling’s hand told the skipper what he was looking for: an Annapolis ring. Zwilling’s was lovingly displayed, and couldn’t have been polished any brighter. “Reporting as ordered, sir,” he said, trying to hold in his disappointment at not finding Sam a Naval Academy graduate. When he saluted, the ring flashed in the sun.
“Pleased to meet you, Mr. Zwilling,” Sam said, reflecting that the new exec was either an optimist or a jerk, one. How could a two-striper in his mid-fifties possibly be anything but a mustang? “We’ll give ’em hell, won’t we?”
“I hope to aid in making this ship an efficient fighting unit, sir,” Zwilling said, and Sam’s heart sank. He had nothing against efficiency. But he didn’t want to sing hymns to it, and Zwilling plainly did.
“Have you ever served on a D.E. before?” Sam asked.
“No, sir,” Zwilling replied. “My last tour of duty was aboard a fleet oiler, and before that I was a junior officer on the Idaho. I have my personnel records with me for your review.”
Of course you do, Sam thought. That wasn’t fair, but he couldn’t help it. Trying not to show what he was feeling, he said, “Well, let’s give you the quick tour, then. There’ll be places where you want to watch your head-not a lot of room in one of these babies.”
“I’ll be careful, sir,” Zwilling said, and Sam believed him. He was unimpressed with the pair of 4.5-inch guns that made up the Josephus Daniels’ main armarment. “The secondary weapons on a battleship are bigger than these,” he sniffed.
“Tell me about it. I fought a five-incher on the Dakota,” Carsten said.
“As battery chief?” Zwilling asked with his first show of interest in his new skipper as a human being.
“Nope.” Sam shook his head. “I was a loader when the Great War started, and ended up running a gun.”
“A loader. I see.” Zwilling looked as uncomfortable as if Sam had admitted to eating with his fingers when he was a kid. There wouldn’t be any talk about professors or courses, not on this ship there wouldn’t.
Sam took him through the destroyer escort: galley, bunkrooms, engines, and all. Finally, he said, “What do you think?”
“Everything seems orderly enough,” the new exec allowed. “Still, I’m sure there’s room for improvement.”
“There always is,” Sam said, not liking the way the commonplace sounded in Zwilling’s mouth. “Do you think you can find your way back to your cabin from here?”
“I do.” Zwilling didn’t lack for confidence, anyhow.
“Well, ask a sailor if you get lost.” Sam inserted the needle with a smile. “I’ll let you get settled, and we’ll talk some more in the wardroom tonight.”
“Yes, sir.” Zwilling saluted again and strode off.
After Sam went up on deck, he watched a sailor standing on the pier kissing a redheaded woman good-bye. A couple of sniffling little boys in dungarees stood by her, so she was probably the sailor’s wife. After a last embrace, he slung his duffel bag and asked the officer of the deck for permission to come aboard.