“I think Johnny and Sy.”
“Yeah, well, tell them you want the corpsman, that’s all.”
“Okay. I’ll see you,” Fatboy said, and went out through the wheelhouse door and onto the bridge deck, walking aft to the ladder that led to the main deck, climbing down, and then going past the forward stack and into the companionway and down the ladder to the engine room. There were perhaps a dozen men in the compartment, including Johnny and Sy. Sy was standing near the workbench, the butt of a rifle at his feet, his hand around the muzzle near the sight. Johnny was sitting on the bench. Both men looked up as Fatboy came down the ladder.
“Hey, how’s it going?” Fatboy said.
“Nice and quiet,” Sy answered.
“You got a hospital corpsman here?”
“Search me,” Sy said. He turned to the men who were standing near the bulkhead just forward of the starboard main engine. “Any of you guys a corpsman?” he asked.
None of the men answered. But some of them turned automatically to look at a thin young man who glanced up nervously and then tried to hide behind the man next to him.
“You the corpsman?” Fatboy asked.
The young man nodded.
“What’s your name?”
“Bunder.”
“Let’s go, Bunder.”
“Wh... wh... where? Where?” Bunder said.
“Come on,” Fatboy said, and drew his .45. Bunder glanced at the gun and nodded, and swallowed, and looked at his shipmates pleadingly. “Up the ladder,” Fatboy said. Bunder went up the ladder ahead of him. Over his shoulder Fatboy called, “Take it easy, now.”
They came out onto the main deck. The sky was sprinkled with stars, the ship moved steadily southward and westward, there was the constant hiss of rushing water against its sides. “You’ll need your kit,” Fatboy said. “Where’s sick bay?”
“In officer’s country.”
“Where’s that?”
“On the berth deck, amidships.”
“Where we just came from?”
“Well, forward of the engine room.”
“How do we get there?”
“We can take the passageway going by the captain’s cabin.”
“Good. That’s right on our way.”
“What do you mean?”
“The captain’s cabin.”
“Well, sick bay’s on the deck below.”
“That’s okay.”
They came down the starboard side of the ship. Bunder opened the hatch leading into the passageway. As they passed the captain’s cabin, he saw that two pieces of chain had been welded to the door and bulkhead, and that a padlock had been passed through them. A ladder about two feet beyond the door and across the passageway led below to the armory locker, the officers’ staterooms, and sick bay. A hatch was at the other end of the passageway. The hatch was closed.
“Down here,” Bunder said. “Listen, could you tell me where we’re going and what I’m supposed to do? So I’ll know what—”
“You’re gonna pull a tooth.”
“What?”
“Yeah, the captain’s tooth.”
“Oh, brother,” Bunder said.
“You’d better bring a pliers or something,” Fatboy said.
Bunder nodded dismally. From the surgical tools in the medicine cabinet he took a heavy forceps and a bandage scissors, and hoped they would suffice to yank the captain’s tooth. This had been the worst day of his entire life. First a pregnant woman — well, they thought she was pregnant — and then all the shooting, and now he had to pull the captain’s tooth, the tooth of a lieutenant commander in the United States Coast Guard. Wouldn’t this day ever end?
“Listen,” he said, “maybe you ought to do it.”
“What are you talking about?”
“Pull the tooth.”
“He asked for you specifically.”
“The captain did?”
“Uh-huh.”
“Oh, brother,” Bunder said, and picked up his kit. He looked up at Fatboy, and then said conversationally, “What are you guys doing, anyway?”
“None of your business,” Fatboy said.
“Oh,” Bunder said.
They went up the steps again. Bunder walked directly to the captain’s door, looked at the padlocked chain again, and then said, “This is locked.”
“I’ve got the key,” Fatboy said. “Stand aside.” He waved the gun at Bunder and reached into his pocket. Bunder backed off against the bulkhead. Fatboy fitted the key into the padlock and opened it. He was putting the key back into his pocket when he saw the look of surprise on Bunder’s face, and immediately turned. Luke Costigan was bounding through the hatch at the other end of the passageway some four feet from where they were standing, both hands clenched together and going up over his head like a sledgehammer. The element of total surprise had been totally wasted on Bunder, who still stood flat against the bulkhead alongside the door, his eyes wide, his mouth gaping as Fatboy moved forward like a boxer to meet Luke’s rush. The surprise element might have equalized the .45 in Fatboy’s hand, but Bunder had very carelessly blown Luke’s advantage, and now Luke rushed forward with both hands clasped together over his head, and then stopped dead and swung them down and sideward at Fatboy’s head just as Fatboy brought the .45 into firing position. For the first time that day, Bunder acted like a hero. He stuck out his foot just enough to catch the tip of Fatboy’s shoe, throwing him off balance. Fatboy hurtled forward clumsily as Luke’s clenched hands came around like a solid iron mace at the end of a swinging chain, colliding with Fatboy’s jaw and sending the .45 flying out of his hand and spinning down the length of the passageway. Fatboy crashed into the bulkhead and then turned, dazed, to find Luke coming at him again. Luke’s hands were bunched into separate solid fists now, and he threw one with all his strength into Fatboy’s midsection and then tried a fierce right uppercut that missed Fatboy’s jaw by inches. Fatboy was still doubled over, his arms clutching at his midsection, a sustained grunt coming from his lips in a steady urgh-urgh-urgh struggle for breath. Luke clenched his left fist and brought it down on the back of Fatboy’s neck in an angry rabbit punch that sent him sprawling to the deck. He bent over him, straddling him, caught his collar in both hands, and banged his head against the deck once, without anger. Fatboy lay still. Bunder stood against the bulkhead, his face pale, his eyes wide, his palms pressed flat to the metal, and looked at Luke as though he wondered which of the men was the lesser of the two evils.
Luke threw open the captain’s door. “Help me get him inside,” he said. “Quick!”
There were some men who claimed Virgil Cooper could see in the dark. Well, maybe he could when he was on dry land with dirt under his boots and with nothing more to worry about than just looking. He sure couldn’t see anything out there on the water, though; it was a wonder ships didn’t just go banging into each other all the time. Well, he supposed they had radar. He looked out over the rail to starboard and couldn’t see a thing but the stars in the distance and even they seemed to be hanging in total darkness, with ocean and sky blending into one, and without a man being able to tell where one started and the other began.
It was a dark night, all right, with no moon and with the ship plunging ahead without running lights into a blackness as deep as hell. It made Coop uncomfortable. It reminded him of that Korean night when the Mongolians came charging out of the darkness blowing their bugles and beating their drums. You’d think the stars would throw just a little more light than they did.
He was walking back aft near the fantail where the canvas canopy was spread like a tent. He paused for a moment to watch the small white tongues of water licking the sides of the ship, to listen to the whispering hiss of steel pushing against ocean, and then began walking forward again.