The master chief boatswain's mate strolled in at 4:30 after ten hot hours supervising work on various topside gear. He'd had a light lunch and sweated off all of that and more, and now figured that a few mugs of beer would replace all the fluids and electrolytes that he'd lost under the hot Alabama sun. The barmaid saw him coming and had a tall one of Samuel Adams all ready by the time he selected a stool. Edward Stuart got there a minute and half a mug later.
"Ain't you Bob Riley?"
"That's right," the bosun said before turning. "Who're you?"
"Didn't think you'd remember me. Matt Stevens. You near tore my head off on the
"Looks like I was wrong," Riley noted, searching his memory for the face.
"No, you were right. I was a real punk back then, but you - well, I owe you one, Master Chief. I did get my shit together. Mainly 'causa what you said." Stuart stuck out his hand. "I figure I owe you a beer at least."
It wasn't all that unusual a thing for Riley to hear. "Hell, we all need straigthenin' out. I got bounced off a coupla bulkheads when I was a kid, too, y'know?"
"Done a little of it myself." Stuart grinned. "You make chief an' you gotta be respectable and responsible, right? Otherwise who keeps the officers straightened out?"
Riley grunted agreement. "Who you workin' for?"
"Admiral Hally. He's at Buzzard's Point. Had to fly down with him to meet with the base commander. I think he's off playing golf right now. Never did get the hang of that game. You're on
"You bet."
"Captain Wegener?"
"Yep." Riley finished off his beer and Stuart waved to the barmaid for refills.
"Is he as good as they say?"
"Red's a better seaman 'n I am," Riley replied honestly.
"Nobody's that good, Master Chief. Hey, I was there when you took the boat across - what was the name of that container boat that snapped in half...?"
"
"I remember watching. Thought you were crazy. Well, shit. All I do now is drive a word processor for the Admiral, but I did a little stuff in a forty-one boat before I made chief, working outa Norfolk. Nothing like
"Don't knock it, Matt. One of those jobs's enough for a couple years of sea stories. I'll take an easy one any day. I'm gettin' a little old for that dramatic stuff."
"How's the food here?"
"Fair."
"Buy you dinner?"
"Matt, I don't even remember what I said to you."
"I remember," Stuart assured him. "God knows how I woulda turned out if you hadn't turned me around. No shit, man. I owe you one. Come on." He waved Riley over to a booth against the wall. They were quickly going through their third beer when Chief Quartermaster Oreza arrived.
"Hey, Portagee," Riley called to his fellow master chief.
"I see the beer's cold, Bob."
Riley waved to his companion. "This here's Matt Stevens. We were on the
"Only about thirty times," Oreza noted.
"You wanna tell the story, Matt?" Riley asked.
"Hey, I didn't even see it all, you know -"
"Yeah, half the crew was puking their guts out. I'm talking a real gale blowing. No way the helo could take off, and this container boat - the after half of her, that is; the fo'ard part was already gone - look like she was gonna roll right there an' then..."
Within an hour, two more rounds had been consumed, and the three men were chomping their way through a disk of knockwurst and sauerkraut, which went well with beer. Stuart stuck with stories about his new Admiral, the Chief Counsel of the Coast Guard, in which legal officers are also line officers, expected to know how to drive ships and command men.
"Hey, what's with these stories I been hearing about you an' those two drug pukes?" the attorney finally asked.
"What d'ya mean?" Oreza asked. Portagee still had some remaining shreds of sobriety.
"Hey, the FBI guys went in to see Hally, right? I had, to type up his reports on my Zenith, y'know?"
"What did them FBI guys say?"
"I'm not supposed - oh, fuck it! Look, you're all in the clear. The Bureau isn't doing a fuckin' thing. They told your skipper 'go forth and sin no more,' okay? The shit you got outa those pukes - didn't you hear? Operation TARPON. That whole sting operation came from you guys. Didn't you know that?"
"What?" Riley hadn't seen a paper or turned on a TV in days. Though he did know about the death of the FBI Director, he had no idea of the connection with his Hang-Ex, as he had taken to calling it in the goat locker.
Stuart explained what he knew, which was quite a lot.
"Half a billion dollars?" Oreza observed quietly. "That oughta build us a few new hulls."
"Christ knows we need 'em," Stuart agreed.
"You guys didn't really - I mean, you didn't really... hang one of the fuckers, did you?" Stuart extracted a Radio Shack mini-tape recorder from his pocket and thumbed the volume switch to the top.
