'I know. If they're going to pull something, it'll be sooner. A lot sooner.'
'We'd just better pray to God that we're ready then. Because when those bastards come out of their hidey- holes, it's going to be full strength, fangs out, and ready for a major rumble.'
'With your permission, Captain, I'd like to tape a broadcast for your TV station. Let the men know what's going on, how we're counting on them.'
'Of course, Admiral.'
Tarrant's face looked terribly grim. 'God help us if we drop the ball on this one, people. We're not going to get a second chance.
The crew's lounge, located far aft aboard the Jefferson, throbbed faintly with the suppressed thunder of the ship's four propellers, each twenty-two feet wide. It was a utilitarian space, occupied by round tables and plastic chairs, and decorated with framed prints showing scenes out of naval history.
It was a popular place for Jefferson's enlisted men and women to gather when they went off duty. There were the usual collections of games to be checked out ? decks of cards, military board games, and classics like Scrabble or Monopoly. There was a Coke machine, and a jukebox that played pieces ranging from country to hard rock. One bulkhead was taken up by a collection of arcade-type video games, most with names like MiG Blaster and Torpedo Alley.
Photographer's Mate Second Class Tom Margolis sat at one of the tables with four of his shipmates, and he was getting mad.
'Hey, Marge!' As he pulled up a chair and joined the group, FFG2 Roy Kirkpatrick puckered his lips, making a loud smacking noise. 'How's about a kiss, sweetie?'
Margolis winced at the familiar taunt. How were you supposed to fight something like this?
'Fuck off,' he said. Angrily, he picked up his can of Coke and took a swig. 'I'm not queer. I like girls! I've got a girlfriend back in the States!'
'Sure, sure,' Gunner's Mate (Missiles) Third Class Enrique Hernandez said, a toothy grin lighting his swarthy face. 'That's what they all say!'
'I'm not a homo!'
'Yeah, well, your boyfriend Pellet's one, ain't he?' Radioman Third Class Mike Weydener said. 'I thought all you queers hung out together.'
'Yeah!' Kirkpatrick said, giggling. 'How's Pellet hung?'
'Frank's a nice guy.'
'Oh, I'll just bet he is!' Fire Control Technician Larry Jankowski mimed a kiss and the others howled with laughter.
'How nice was he?' Hernandez asked.
Margolis could feel his face getting red. He never knew how to answer these guys when they started making fun of him. He took another swig of Coke, desperately hoping to cover his embarrassment.
'Hey, look at Margie's face!' Kirkpatrick said, slapping the table. 'I never seen a guy get so red!'
'Matches his hair,' Radarman Third Class Reidel observed. Harold Reidel looked like a recruiting poster: surfboard blond, health-club muscular, and as handsome as a teen movie idol. 'You must've hit a major nerve, Big- K.'
PH2 Margolis was twenty-one years old. He'd joined the Navy the day after he'd graduated from high school; his parents were divorced and life at home with an alcoholic mother was no picnic, The sea had seemed the perfect escape.
But after three and a half years in the Navy, he was ready to call it quits. Six more months, he thought, and I'm out of here, a civilian again and free at last, free at last, thank God Almighty I'm free at last!
It wasn't that he disliked the Navy. He'd gotten by okay, on the whole.
Going to photographer's school after boot camp had taught him a trade, and when he got out he wanted to pursue a career as a professional photographer, maybe for a newspaper.
The problem was that Tom Margolis was not exactly the athletic, macho type, not big like Kirkpatrick, not hard-muscled like Reidel. He was intelligent and his speech showed it. He liked to read, he wore glasses, and his pale, freckled skin ? legacy of his hated red hair ? seemed to betray every intense or unpleasant emotion. He stood out in a crowd, especially in a crowd of types like Kirkpatrick and Reidel, and that made his chronic shyness worse.
So he was different from the other sailors of the group he'd fallen in with lately. As for the issue of his being gay, he wasn't… at least as far as he knew. He'd heard that you could be homosexual and not be aware of the fact, but he'd done a lot of pretty heavy petting with Doris in the backseat of her father's car during his senior year in high school, and he was pretty sure he was all right in that department at least.
Gays in the military, especially in the Navy, aboard ship, had remained a controversial issue long after President Clinton had lifted the ban on recruiting them. Margolis had never had much of an opinion one way or the other. He'd heard scuttlebutt that Fire Control Technician Third Class Frank Pellet was gay, but as far as Margolis knew from personal experience, Pellet was just a friendly, bright, and outgoing guy who shared Margolis's love of photography. Pellet had never made a pass at him, never said or done anything to betray his sexual orientation. Margolis had decided early on to ignore the rumors and enjoy the friendship.
And that was when the rumors had started about him.
'I'll tell you, Marge,' Hernandez said. 'If you are gay and we find out, your ass is grass, you get me?'
'Yeah,' Reidel added. 'We don't want no fags on this ship.'
'Oh, Mama!' Kirkpatrick said, licking his lips. His eyes had strayed across the room to a pair of female enlisted personnel who'd just entered the lounge. One was a rather plain-looking girl who worked in personnel, but the other was a brunette bombshell from Disbursing who filled her too-tight uniform blouse with wondrous, bobbing motion. 'You know, guys, it just ain't fuckin' fair. They went and made it legal for queers to join up in this man's Navy. I mean, there they are, right? Sleeping in our compartments. Crowding in with us nuts to butts right there in the shower heads. Well, I'll tell you one thing, and no shit. When they let us shower with the girls on this ship, I'll stop bitching about them letting fags take showers with me! I mean, am I right? It's the same thing, right?'
'Fuckin'-A, Big-K,' Hernandez said. 'Man, oh, man, lookit that nice ass.
Betcha that looks Grade-A prime in the shower, huh?'
'It'd look better in bed,' Jankowski volunteered. 'With her legs spread apart like this.' He demonstrated, rubbing his crotch suggestively, and the others agreed with moans and laughter.
There had always been gays in the Navy. Always. Until the early nineties, however, they'd kept their presence secret for the most part, for anyone who admitted to being gay was immediately discharged from the service.
Sometimes the discovery ended tragically. In October 1992, a young seaman aboard the U.S.S. Belleau Wood ? a ship with a fleet-wide reputation for being especially rough on gays ? had had his face brutally smashed against a urinal in a restroom in Sasebo, Japan, until he was dead. There had long been dark rumors of other, similar incidents, men reported missing overboard in a storm or AWOL in some foreign port.
Not until the abrupt liberal shift in the government with the Clinton Administration had the official ban on gays finally been lifted. Recruiters were no longer allowed to ask prospective recruits about sexual orientation.
Unfortunately, lifting the ban had not solved the problem. Relatively few gays had come out of the closet, for there was no way to change the embedded prejudice of their shipmates, not overnight. Kirkpatrick's complaint was a common one: If we can't shower with the female sailors, why should gays be allowed to shower with us?
No civilian could imagine the closeness of the quarters, the complete lack of privacy aboard ship. Even aboard a floating city like the Jefferson, with most of her thousand-foot length reserved for her aircraft and the gear and supplies that kept them flying, space was at a premium. When morale was poor, when stress was high, slights, attacks, or harassments, real or imagined, could explode like a magnesium flare in an avgas fuel-storage tank.
More than four years after the ban on gays had been lifted, there were still far too many suspicious 'accidents' at sea.
Margolis was scared. As the rumor that he was gay had spread, he'd been getting more and more harassment ? shipmates banging into him in the passageways or the chow line, apparently by accident but hard.
