Richard Marsten - Murder in the navy

Singer called in another reading a minute later. Rook marked another X and connected both X’s with a straight line. Another reading, another X, another reading, another X. On the plastic, writing backward. Rook drew a box and inside the box he indicated: Course, 190. Speed, 250.

From the radar gear, Singer asked, “Request permission to stop Sugar Roger antenna.”

Masters snapped down his button. “Permission granted,” he said.

Singer snapped a dial, adjusted another. The operation couldn’t have taken more than forty seconds. Into his phone he said, “Single bogey.”

Rook automatically wrote this onto the plastic. They now knew they had an unidentified aircraft (which they’d known all along, since the B-26 was simulating an enemy plane and they had been informed of this before the practice session began) that was traveling at a speed of 250 miles an hour on a course of 190, which meant it would be on the hotel in a matter of minutes.

Masters pulled down a hand mike. “Blue One, this is Blue Base,” he said. “Over.”

Caldroni, who was playing the role of the squadron commander leading the interceptor planes known as Blue One, answered, “This is Blue One. Over.”

“Single bogey,” Masters said, glancing at the plastic again. “Three-one-zero, range twenty-two, course one-nine-zero, speed two-fifty.” Rapidly he calculated an intercepting course. “Vector two-one-zero, angels five. Over.”

“Wilco and out,” Caldroni said.

On the plotting board before him Caldroni plotted his own squadron’s progress, together with the progress of the oncoming B-26. The B-26 moved relentlessly toward its target, which was the hotel. Caldroni’s squadron, for which they had calculated a top speed of 350 miles an hour, had a hell of a long way to go before visual contact could be made.

Masters picked up the hand mike again. “Blue One, this is Blue Base. Over.”

“This is Blue One,” Caldroni said. “Over.”

“Tallyho?” Masters asked, wanting to know if, according to the plotting Caldroni was doing, the squadron had as yet sighted the enemy aircraft.

“Not yet, sir,” Caldroni said. “Over.”

“Out,” Masters said sourly. The men all looked up as they heard the sound of the B-26 overhead. “We were just blown off the map,” Masters informed them. “You all did one hell of a sloppy job.” He picked up a live mike and said, “Yellow One, this is Charley Horse. Over.”

Static erupted into the darkened room. Then the pilot of the B-26 answered, “Go ahead, Charley Horse.”

“Want to take another run, please? Over.”

“Roger. Give us a vector. Over.”

“Vector three-one-zero, angels three. Choose your own approach. We want to be surprised. Start out at about a hundred and fifty, will you? We want to see what kind of range pickup we’ve got.”

“Hope you’ve got plenty of time,” the pilot said. “This buggy can’t do much more’n two hundred and fifty per. This ain’t a jet, you know.”

“I know,” Masters said. “We’ll be ready for you when you come back.”

“They should’ve put this crate in moth balls years ago,” the pilot muttered, and then he added, “Out.”

Masters turned to Singer. “What the hell’s wrong with you, Singer? Were you asleep?”

“I was getting a lot of land-mass echo, sir.”

“Baloney,” Masters said. “There’s nothing between you and England but the Atlantic ocean.”

“Must be high waves, then, sir.”

“Come on, Singer, get on the ball. You pick him up at thirty miles, and he’s on us before we can get a plane to him. All right, let’s leave this for now. I want all of you in Room Thirty-three in ten minutes. Take a smoke, and be there on the button. We’re going to try a few torpedo runs.”

“We did that already,” Kraus, another of the radarmen, complained.

“And we’ll keep doing it until we get it right,” Masters snapped. “Go take your smokes.”

Andrew Brague, an ensign fresh out of communications school, walked over to Masters. “Think we’re riding them too hard, sir?”

“What?” Masters said, wondering why every idiot ensign in the world eventually came under his wing.

“The men, sir. Don’t you think you’re being a little hard on them?”

“How so?” Masters asked, annoyed.

“No liberty since we’ve been here. Round-the-clock watches. Classes every minute except for chow and smoke breaks. I don’t know, sir.”

Masters eyed Brague sourly. “Tell me, Ensign,” he said, “just what the hell you think this is — a picnic?”

“Sir?” Brague said, startled.

“We’re here to unify these men into a smoothly working machine. We’re going to be a picket ship, Brague. Do you know what that means? It means that the life of the Sykes and the life of the task force behind the Sykes will depend upon the efficiency of our radar screen. Do you know what the average life span of a picket ship on station is, Brague?”

“No, sir.”

“It’s measured in minutes, Brague,” Masters said. “I don’t want to wind up as a statistic. So I’m trying to pound some working knowledge into the heads of these men. This may all be a joke to them now, but someday it may be serious, damned serious, and I think we should be ready, don’t you?”

“Well, of course, sir.”

“Then don’t tell me I’m riding the men too hard. I’ll ride them as hard as I have to, and there’ll be no liberty until I can see something sinking in. Have I been ashore yet, Brague?”

“No, sir.”

“Damn right I haven’t. And I’ll tell you something else, Brague. There’s a girl I’ve been dying to call for the past week. She’s in Norfolk right now, and that’s where I’d like to be, and I want her to know that. But every time I come within six yards of that phone booth in the lobby, there’s always somebody coming along with another damn order from the C.O. of this joint. I haven’t even had time to write her a letter! So don’t come weeping to me about the men. We’re all ‘men,’ Brague, and to hell with Navy jargon. And I don’t like this any more than the rest of us.”

“Yes, sir.”

“Don’t look so damn sad. Round up the rest of the officers, and we’ll have a conference on thus torpedo stuff before the run-through. Bring your cigarettes.”

“Yes, sir.”

“Brague?”

“Yes, sir?”

“Would you like to take my mid-watch tonight? So that I can finally get that letter off?”

Brague looked militantly disappointed. “If you say so, sir.”

“Skip it. I was just kidding. Get your cigarettes and your fellow officers. We’ve got a lot of work to do.”

On the base at Norfolk there was talk, lots of talk.

“Sure, I knew Greg Barter,” the talkers said. “Hell of a nice guy. But I understand he was an attendant in the booby hatch at Bethesda. That stuff’s contagious, you know.”

“Greg Barter, yes,” the talkers said, “a good man, one of my best. Inclined toward melancholia, however. Should have foreseen this, should have sensed it coming. Well, you never know when a suicidal tendency will emerge full blown, do you? Eh?”

“I spotted him for a nut from go,” the talkers said.

The talkers said, “Greg thank too much. When you start thinking, you find out you don’t like yourself so much. Bang! You jump out the window.”

And the talkers said, “I liked Greg. You can’t tell me he jumped through that glass. He musta slipped.”

“All alone in the solarium,” the talkers said. “Who the hell knows what happened, really?”

“One guy knows,” the talkers said, “and that’s Greg Barter, and he ain’t telling it to nobody but Saint Peter.”