chief, and then a gravelly voice erupted through the morning stillness.
“Where the hell did you get that army jacket?”
Emie stopped. I turned.
The chief was talking about the dark blue nylon jacket Ernie wore. Mine just had a map of Korea with a dragon coiled around it. Ernie’s had a map of the Korean Peninsula, too, but instead of a dragon he had a dagger stabbing through the heart of Seoul, dripping blood. Beneath was the embroidered statement, “I’ve already done my time in hell,” and the dates of Ernie’s first tour in country.
Sailors only spend a few days here, not twelve months.
Ernie grinned at the chief. “Stole it off a drunken dogface.”
A howl of laughter went up from the squids behind us. The chief laughed too.
“All right!” the chief said, waving us on through.
Ernie caught up with me as we walked down a long metal corridor.
“Quick thinking, Ernie.”
“No, it wasn’t,” he said. “It’s true. I did steal it off a drunken dogface.”
I didn’t bother to ask for details.
Actually, I had no idea where we were going. The Kitty Hawk seemed immense; loaded with armaments and aircraft and big enough to house three thousand sailors. We passed a barber shop and a room with a fat color TV in it, and in the distance I smelled the usual aromas of a military chow hall in the morning. Coffee, bacon, sizzling sausage.
“I haven’t had a decent breakfast since we left Seoul,” Ernie said.
“No time.”
“So where are we going?”
“We have to find the bridge.”
“What bridge?”
“That’s where the captain is and probably where they keep all the classified documents.”
“Watch your head!”
A thick metal pipe ran across the roof of the passageway as if someone had set it there as a booby trap. I ducked beneath it.
We found a ladder and climbed. And kept climbing until I started ‘to smell salt air again. Suddenly there was dark sky above me and we stepped out on the metal deck.
At the railing, the mist had started to lift. Out to sea a band of deep blue lit the horizon. A crescent moon sat slightly above, as if overseeing the impending sunrise. Toward land, the lights of Pusan twinkled on, one by one.
I took a deep breath of the fresh air and held it.
“Maybe I joined the wrong service,” I told Ernie.
“You?” Ernie said. “A squid? Floating for months at a time? You couldn’t stand it.”
“Maybe you’re right.”
Light filtered through huge plate glass windows in the metal superstructure looming above us. Behind them, shadows scurried.
We wandered below deck, peeking in offices, until I saw a tired-looking sailor slumped behind a desk.
“Who handles classified documents?” I asked.
“Who wants to know?”
I slipped out my badge and flopped it open.
“Investigative Services,” I said.
I was stretching the truth a bit. Naval Investigative Services was the navy’s equivalent of the army’s Criminal Investigation Division. No sense advertising that soldiers were aboard the Kitty Hawk. You might as well tell them they’d been infected with the bubonic plague.
He barely glanced at the badge.
“This must be about Harrelson,” he said.
“Yeah, that’s right.” I tried to hide my surprise. “What’s the status?”
“Still in sick bay. Whoever did it cracked his skull wide open.”
“Will he live?”
He lifted his hand and rocked it from side to side. “They’re not sure yet.”
“What did the guy get?”
“How in the fuck should I know? They don’t tell me shit.”
“But Harrelson worked with classified documents, didn’t he?”
“Damn right. That’s why Chief Longo is so pissed.”
“Longo’s in charge of classified documents?”
“In charge of security for the whole ship.”
“Where can I find him?”
“Down to the next ladder, one deck above. The office is marked.”
“Thanks.”
We left the clerk, found the ladder, climbed upstairs, and wandered the hall until we found an office with the stenciled letters: Security.
It was a roomy office, with six desks and a dozen filing cabinets. A heavyset man was on the phone. He wore the uniform of a chief. A group of sailors milled about, trying to look busy. Everyone seemed upset.
“Yes, sir. Yes.”
The chief slammed down the phone. I walked toward him.
“Chief Longo?”
He checked us out, letting his eyes linger on our wrinkled blue jeans.
“Yeah?”
I pulled out my badge and the identification behind its plastic holder and barely opened it, asking the question as I did. “How’s Harrelson?”
“Stable. That’s about the best they can say.” He scowled.
“I’m Investigator Sueno. This is my partner, Investigator Bascom.”
Ernie nodded slightly.
“So fast?” The scowl hadn’t left his face.
“We happened to be in the area. I need a rundown of the type of documents that were compromised.”
The chief rubbed his forehead and eyes with a big hairy paw. The man was obviously exhausted. Good.
“You know you need clearance, even an investigator needs clearance, before I can discuss weaponry.”
Weaponry! What the hell was Shipton after? I took a chance. “Only if it’s nuclear,” I said firmly.
The chief snapped, “What the fuck do you think I’m talking about?”
He looked around, as if suddenly realizing that he’d shouted.
“Oh, sorry. It’s just that Harrelson was a good kid.” He shook his head glumly. “Right here on the Hawk.”
“Did anybody get a look at the perpetrator?”
“Nobody. I doubt even that Harrelson did. The blow came from behind. It was twenty-three hundred hours, maybe he wasn’t as alert as he should’ve been. The guy broke into the classified locker.”
“But only went after the documents concerning weaponry?”
“That’s what it looks like so far. Jesus, I don’t know. I think we’d better go talk to the captain.” The chief rubbed his eyes again. “So you guys just happened to be in the area.” He was looking at Ernie. “What detachment are you with?”
“Seoul.”
His big hand stopped rubbing. “Seoul? There isn’t a Naval Investigative Detachment in Seoul.”
“Temporary duty,” I said. “From the Philippines.”
“They sent a whole detachment on temporary duty from the Philippines?”
“Listen,” Ernie said. “You got a head around here? We been wandering around the ship and all I’ve had so far this morning is coffee. My eyes are about to turn yellow.”
“Sure. Down the hallway.”
