Clear and Present Danger

use the radio because they didn't know how to work it - you see that on the tape? It was one of those gollywog computer-driven scanners with the hundred-page manual - and our friends don't reada da Eenglish so good. Somebody on the fishing boat will corroborate part of the story. It's all a horrible misunderstanding, see? So the U.S. Attorney in Mobile decides that he might not have a good-enough case, and our friends cop to a lesser charge. That's how it works.' He paused.

'That's hard to believe.'

'We got no bodies. We got no witnesses. We have weapons aboard, but who can say who fired them? It's all circumstantial evidence.' Oreza smiled for a grim moment. 'My daughter gave me a good brief last month on how all this stuff works. They whistle up someone to back up their version of how they got aboard - somebody clean, no criminal record - and all of a sudden the only real witnesses are on the other side, and we got shit, Red. They cop to some little piddly-ass charge, and that's it.'

I_I

'But if they're innocent, why don't they -'

'Talk very much? Oh, hell, that's the easy part. A foreign-flag warship pulls up alongside and puts an armed boarding party aboard. The boarding party points a bunch of guns at them, roughs them up a bit, and they're so scared that they didn't say anything - that's what the lawyer'll say. Bet on it. Oh, they prob'ly won't walk, but the prosecutor will be so afraid of losing the case that he'll look for an easy way out. Our friends will get a year or two in the can, then they get a free plane ticket home.'

'But they're murderers.'

'Sure as hell,' Portagee agreed. 'To get off, all they have to be is smart murderers. And there might even be some other things they can say. What my girl taught me, Red, is that it's never as simple as it looks. Like I said, you shoulda let Bob handle it. The kids would have backed you up, Captain. You oughta hear what they're saying about this thing.'

Captain Wegener was quiet for a moment. That made sense, didn't it? Sailors didn't change much over the years, did they? On the beach they'd work mightily to get into every pair of female pants in sight, but on the question of murder and rape, the 'kids' felt the same way the old-timers did. Times hadn't changed all that much after all. Men were still men. They knew what justice was, courts and lawyers to the contrary.

Red thought about that for a few seconds. Then he rose and walked to his bookshelf. Next to his current copy of the Uniform Code of Military Justice and The Manual of Courts Martial was a much older book better known by its informal title, 'Rocks and Shoals.' It was the old reference book of regulations whose ancestry went back to the 18th century, and which had been replaced by the UCMJ soon after World War II. Wegener's copy was an antique. He'd found it gathering dust in a cardboard box fifteen years before at an old boat station on the California coast. This one had been published in 1879, when the rules had been very different. It had been a safer world then, the captain told himself. It wasn't hard to understand why. All you had to do was read what the rules had once been...

'Thanks, Portagee. I've got a little work to do. I want you and Riley here at fifteen hundred.'

Oreza stood. 'Aye aye, sir.' The quartermaster wondered for a moment what the captain had thanked him for. He was skilled at reading the skipper's mind, but it didn't work this time. He knew that something was going on in there. He just didn't know what it was. He also knew that he'd find out at fifteen hundred. He could wait.

Wegener had lunch with his officers a few minutes later. He sat quietly at the end of the table reading over some message traffic. His wardroom was young and informal. Table talk was as lively as usual. The talk today was on the obvious subject, and Wegener allowed it to go on as he flipped through the yellow sheets generated by the ship's printer. The thought that had come to him in his stateroom was taking shape. He weighed the pluses and minuses in silence. What could they really do to him? Not much, he judged. Would his people go along with him?

'I heard Oreza say that in the old days, they knew what to do about bastards like this,' a lieutenant (j.g.) observed at the far end of the table. There were affirmative grunts all around the table.

'Ain't 'progress' a bitch?' another noted. The twenty-four-year-old officer didn't know that he had just made a decision for his commanding officer.

It would work, Wegener decided. He glanced up from his messages to look at the faces of his officers. He'd trained them well, the captain thought. He'd had them for ten months now, and their performance was as nearly perfect as any commander could ask. They'd been a sorry, dejected lot when he'd arrived at the shipyard, but now they sparkled with enthusiasm. Two had grown mustaches, the better to look like the seamen they'd become. All of them lounged in their hard-backed chairs, radiating competence. They were proud of their ship and proud of their captain. They'd back him up. Red joined the conversation, just to make sure, just to test the waters, just to decide who would play a part and who would not.

He finished his lunch and returned to his cabin. The paperwork was still there, and he raced through it as quickly as he could, then opened his 'Rocks and Shoals.' At fifteen hundred Oreza and Riley arrived, and he outlined his plan. The two master chiefs were surprised at first, but fell into line quickly.

'Riley, I want you to take this down to our guests. One of 'em dropped it on the bridge.' Wegener fished the cigarette pack out of his pocket. 'There's a vent in the brig, isn't there?'

'Sure is, skipper,' the bosun answered in some surprise. He didn't know about the 'Calverts.'

'We start at twenty-one hundred,' the captain said.

'About the time the weather gets here,' Oreza observed. 'Fair enough, Red. You know you wanna be real careful how you -'

'I know, Portagee. What's life without a few risks?' he asked with a smile.

Riley left first. He walked forward to a ladder, then down two levels and aft until he got to the brig. The two were there, inside the ten-foot-square cage. Each lay on a bunk. They might have been speaking before, but stopped when the door to the compartment opened. It seemed to the bosun that someone might have included a microphone in the brig, but the district legal officer had once explained that such an installation would be a violation of constitutional rights, or a violation of search-and-seizure, or some such legalistic bullshit, the chief thought.

'Hey, Gomer,' he said. The one on the lower bunk - the one he'd cracked across the bridge rail - looked around to see who it was. He was rewarded with widening eyes. 'You guys get lunch?' the bosun asked.

'Yes.' There was an accent there, but a funny one, the master chief thought.

'You dropped your smokes on the bridge awhile back.' Riley tossed the pack through the bars. They landed on the deck, and Pablo - the chief thought he looked like a Pablo - snatched them up with a surprised look on his face.

'Thank you,' the man said.

'Uh- huh. Don't you boys go anywhere without letting me know, hear?' Riley chuckled and walked away. It was a real brig. The designers had gotten that part right, the master chief thought. Even had its own head. That offended Riley. A prison cell on a Coast Guard cutter. Hmph. But at least that meant you didn't have to detail a couple of men to guard the gomers. At least not yet, Riley smiled to himself. Are you boys in for a surprise .

Weather at sea is always impressive. Perhaps it looks that way sweeping across a uniform surface, or maybe the human mind simply knows that weather has a power at sea that it lacks on land. There was a three-quarter moon tonight, allowing Wegener to watch the line squalls approach at over twenty knots. There were sustained twenty-five-knot winds in there, and gusts almost double that. Experience told him that the gentle four-foot swells that Panache rode through would soon be whipped to a maniacal series of breaking waves and flying spray. Not all that much, really, but enough to give his cutter an active ride. Some of his younger crewmen would presently regret dinner. Well, that was something you had to learn about the sea. She didn't like people to overeat.

Wegener welcomed the storm. In addition to giving him the atmosphere he wanted, it also gave him an excuse to fiddle with his watch bill. Ensign O'Neil had not yet conned the ship through heavy weather and tonight would be his chance.

'Any problems, Mister?' the skipper asked the junior officer.