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A scratchy announcement came from the box again. “Officer of the Deck, ESM, we have a military band radar at 045 relative.” Connelly swung that way and Jabo raised his glasses. He couldn’t see anything yet.

The XO found another set of glasses in the bridge bag and looked in the same direction. “Nothing there yet.”

Another voice on the box: “Officer of the Deck, radio, we are being hailed on band nine, can’t quite make it out yet, they are very far out. But they are using our NATO call sign.”

“Well, at least it’s one of ours,” said XO.

“And they know who we are?” said Jabo. He was confused. He put down his glasses and the XO was nodding grimly, glasses still raised, waiting to see it.

Radio again: “Sir they’ve identified themselves: it’s a tug from the military sealift command, the USNS Navajo.”

“The Navajo?” said Jabo. “What the fuck is the Navajo?”

The XO sighed then finally put down the glasses and looked at his watch. “Our rescuers.”

• • •

The captain stayed in control until the watch was shifted and he was absolutely certain the situation was stable. Even then he found it difficult to leave until the XO went up the ladder. He made his way to Bunkroom Eight.

The doc had done an incredible job throughout, just as the captain expected. These old master chief corpsmen were a godsend, and they were getting harder and harder to find, no boat ever wanted to let theirs go. They were like the old klaxon diving alarms, passed from boat to boat, never allowed to retire or go to shore. Guys like Cote, who’d actually patched up Marines under fire in Vietnam….they were all years past their twenty-year point. Even the ones like Cote who loved it all — the navy couldn’t keep them at sea forever.

The bunkroom was quiet. The nine most injured men on the boat all seemed to be sleeping soundly, and the captain wondered if they had all been sedated or were at least doped up on pain killers. Three of the bunks had IV bags suspended from them. Cote was sitting on a small stool in the middle, writing on a clipboard that he was looking at through his tiny reading glass. Something that looked a lot like a fishing tackle box was on the deck at his feet, full of rolls of gauze, tape, and shiny stainless steel scissors. The scene was a portrait of utter competence.

“Doc.”

“Captain, hello…” said Cote. He started to get up.

“Don’t,” said the captain, raising a hand. “But do you have a second to tell me what’s going on?”

Cote put down the clipboard and stood up anyway, eager to tell the captain about the status of his most injured men.

“These three are probably the most serious,” said Cote, pointing to the forward three racks.

“Who are they?

“Palko has a fractured skull…he’s not moving. Rogers and Ferrero have concussions.”

Jesus, thought the captain, two a-gangers and the E-div chief.

“How bad?”

“Hard to say,” said the master chief. “That’s why I want to keep an eye on them. But all three were knocked out, I don’t know for how long. The good news is, that’s the worst injuries we’ve got.”

There was a pause between them where they both thought the same thing: except for the bodies in the freezer.

“What else?” said the captain.

The master chief pointed toward the three outboard bunks. “Here we’ve got two pretty severe bleeding cuts, that I stitched up, and they should be fine. I just want to keep them still for a while and make sure — since we really don’t know how much blood they lost. And the bottom rack there is Frazier with a complex fracture. He got thrown into the ice cream machine at the moment of the collision. Broke his ulna clean through and absolutely destroyed the ice cream maker.”

The captain pulled back the curtain with a finger, and Petty Officer Frazier looked back up at him, apparently the only sick man of the nine awake. “Hello Frazier.”

“Hello, Captain,” he said with a smile and the slightly elongated vowels of a man on heavy pain medication.

“How are you feeling?”

“Pretty good now,” he said. “The doc fixed me up with some of the good stuff.” He laughed a little as he said it.

The captain looked up at the doc. “How is that holding out? Do we have enough pain medication?”

Cote closed the dark curtain in front of Frazier’s rack, and Frazier didn’t protest. “I’m being careful with it,” said Cote. “For a lot of reasons. We’ve got tons of aspirin and ibuprofen…we’ll never run out of that shit. I’m already low on the more powerful stuff like Vicodin and Percocet. So I’m rationing that out. But the worst ones here…” he pointed discretely at Frazier’s rack. “I’ve got morphine.”

“Ok, good,” said the captain. “Who else?”

“Over here are the three worst burns,” said the master chief. “They’re all bandaged up but need to stay still. They are probably done until we pull in and get them to a hospital.”

The captain nodded. It was horrible…but better than he’d feared. It didn’t look like they would have any more deaths.

“Any others? Any walking wounded around here with an injury bad enough I should know about it?”