Clear and Present Danger

"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 It was the old reference book of regulations whose ancestry went back to the 18th century, and which had been replaced by the UCMJ soon after World War II.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 -"