subby, or junior lieutenant, walking up the incline of the slanting passageway, blowing high and low on his whistle, telling everyone to report to their boat stations immediately.
“See, I bloody told you,” began Johnson.
Spence had never been so petrified in all his life, but he could hear a voice. “Here, Chief,” he said to the petty officer, his voice dry, with an almost squeaky quality to it in his fear. “I’ll have a gander.”
“All right, lad. Here, loop this about you. I’ll take up the slack.” The CPO started feeding out the yellow nylon rope, taking a turn around one of the ladder’s rungs.
“Too short tugs from you,” he called out to Spence, “and I’ll haul. Make it snappy as you can.”
“Righto, Chief.”
“Righto, my arse,” said Johnson.
Spence was now up to his chest in surprisingly warm water, the ice-cold Atlantic momentarily heated by the dying gas steam turbines.
“Listen, mate,” yelled Johnson, “you want to play bloody hero, you go ahead, but I think—”
There was another explosion; this time the ship pushed hard aport fifteen degrees, its whole structure shuddering. Spence was off the last rung, underwater, the CPO and Johnson sucked off the ladder as well, the CPO barely managing to hold on to the rung around which he’d taken a turn with the nylon rope. In the thick fog that now filled the rapidly flooding engine room, Spence glimpsed Johnson’s fire-red air tank going past him, Johnson screaming. Spence made a grab, felt a boot, and hung on with his right arm, his left groping for a hold, any hold, as he felt his air supply cease, his mouth full of salt water and oil. He felt a violent wrenching, his shoulder driven so hard into a stanchion that, putting his left arm out to grab it before he was swept away again, he felt his hold on Johnson weakening, the seaman not helping by panicking and thrashing about. But with all his will Spence held fast to his shipmate. His left boot touched something and he let it take all his weight. It was one of the upper rungs on a stairway thirty feet farther down the engine room from where they’d entered. As he hauled himself up, not yet realizing he had been driven so far down the engine room, thinking he had somehow been hauled back to the first ladder entrance, Spence, straining to hold Johnson’s head above, looked about in the fog for the CPO.
He was gone, the yellow nylon rope floating now about him and Johnson like some great water snake in a lake that had only minutes before been
Johnson already had his helmet and air tank off as he lumbered up the last dozen rungs to the top, water rising quickly behind them. He swore violently at the inner tie of the asbestos trousers, which his fingers were plucking at frantically, his words a torrent of frenzied invective. Spence was now out of his suit but was still looking back to see if there was any sign of the CPO. A body washed past them, its face puffy, purple, and badly lacerated — an engineering officer, by his arm stripes, the facial wounds remarkably clean.
“My Gawd!” said Johnson, taking the last steps in twos, spinning open the ring lock door, stumbling out as the ship leaned farther to port, the door slamming shut, opening on the rebound, revealing a new hissing surge of water rising in the engine room. Spence, still inside, tripped on the second to top rung, a foot from the door’s sill, and instead of catching hold of the ring handle at the door’s center, his fall meant that he just managed to grab the sill. “Hang on!” he called to Johnson. Johnson paused for a second, heard the hiss of more water, slammed the hatch shut, spun the wheel, and bolted, knocking down an artificer on the now sharply inclined passageway.
Dazed, lifting himself up, the artificer saw the door of the engine room move, its high, mouselike squeal audible amid the deeper rumble of the ship that was now sinking, as millions of gallons sought to fill every possible space, ironically bringing the ship back to a stable position before it began listing again, this time to starboard. The artificer saw the wheel move again and was about to reach for it when the door flew open on the downward incline and a seaman came tumbling out, slamming against the opposite bulkhead. For a moment as the artificer leaned on the door, pushing it shut and spinning the wheel, water bubbling out about his feet like an overflowing toilet, he thought the seaman was wearing red Day-Glo gloves.
Coming up, splashing behind them, was a CPO from the combat control center. “Come on, you two. Topside. Old girl’s had—” He saw Spence collapse onto the deck, and now the artificer saw what he had thought were red gloves.
On the deck they laid William Spence down on a net stretcher, the roaring light above him so bright, it seemed he was entering the sun. A sick bay attendant struggled for several minutes beneath the down-blast of the helicopter’s blades and in the spray it was whipping up about them before he managed to give Spence a shot of morphine.
The OOD, his face bleeding, the cuts superficial, looking more serious than they were, cast a glance down at Spence. He thought he’d seen him in the galley once. He saw the seaman’s eyes open briefly, then shut. All about him there were men calling for help, some quietly moaning as the fury of the sea continued unabatedly, indifferently, to batter the dying ship.
The OOD was trying to decide the priority cases for the chopper’s first run. Amid the noise of the chopper, shouts of men dying around him, some washed overboard and lost already, the other ships unable to stop, the sick bay attendant realized that the officer’s glance at Spence was a silent question, but the attendant’s grimace was one of agonized indecision as he shouted above the roar of the helo, “Wouldn’t put money on it, sir. Then again —”
The officer looked helplessly around, but there was no one to help him decide. He knelt down in the wind that was whistling wildly through sheared metal and over the bodies littered all around, and placed his hand on the boy’s forehead, making the sign of the cross, trying to remember the words of the Lord’s Prayer, trying to decide whether the boy should be a priority case or not.
“I can’t move my legs, sir. I can’t feel nothin’, sir, nothin’ at all.” It was Johnson, lying on a stretcher near a starboard davit. “I can’t.”
“It’s all right, old chap,” said the gunnery officer. “You just lie there. We’ll get you off on the next chopper.” Nearby, a bosun, overhearing the conversation, turned to his mate. “Don’t see much wrong with
“Shock, I expect,” said his mate. “Poor bugger’s spine probably crushed, paralyzed from the waist down. That’s why he don’t feel anything.”
“Thought I saw him walking out on deck,” said the bosun. A wave smacked the starboard side of the
“Nah,” said his mate. “Must have been another bloke. Christ, I ‘ope they send more helos. I don’t fancy this lot.”
Next to him the bosun was zipping up the body bag in which they’d laid the cook.
CHAPTER FIFTY
The cavernous troop deck aboard the LPH
“My name is Douglas Freeman and I’m here because, like you, I was considered the best for the job. First thing I want to tell you tonight is that I have no intention of dying.”
There was a ripple of strained laughter.
“Neither, I trust, do you.”
More laughter.
“Secondly—” The general’s eyes were taking in the whole hangar with such intensity that every private, section, platoon, and company commander thought the general was staring at him. “I’m not about to lead any dope-heads into battle. I don’t give a goddamn what the doctors say, or the surgeon general says — there isn’t such a thing as a goddamned
