Peter T. Deutermann - The Edge of Honor

THE EDGE OF HONOR by P. T. DEUTERMANN

THUNDEROUS APPLAUSE FOR P. T. DEUTERMANN AND THE EDGE OF HONOR:

St. Martins Paperbacks Titles by P. T. Deutermann

scorpion in the sea THE EDGE OF HONOR

ST. MARTINS PAPERBACKS

NOTE: If you purchased this book without a cover you should be aware that this book is stolen property. It was reported as unsold and destroyed to the publisher, and neither the author nor the publisher has received any payment for this stripped book.

This is a work of fiction. Characters, military organizations, ships, and places in this novel are either the product of the authors imagination, or, if real, or based on real entities, are used fictitiously without any intent to describe their actual conduct or character. Insofar as this book addresses military issues, policies, and history, the work represents the views of the author alone and does not necessarily represent the policies and views of the United States Department of Defense.

THE EDGE OF HONOR

Copyright S 1994 by P. T. Deutermann.

Official Privilege excerpt copyright S 1995 by P. T. Deutermann.

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be used or reproduced in any manner whatsoever without written permission except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles or reviews. For information address St. Martins Press, 175 Fifth Avenue, New York, N. Y.

10010.

Library of Congress Catalog Card Number: 94-2670

ISBN: 0-312-95396-8

Printed in the United States of America

St. Martins Press hardcover edition published 1994 St. Martins Paperbacks edition/May 1995

10 987654321

This book is dedicated to the thousands of men and women of the United States Navy who served honorably during the Vietnam War.

Acknowledgments

I wish to thank George Witte, Carol Edwards, and Sally Richardson at St. Martins Press for their extensive help with this book, and also my wife, Susan, for her sustaining confidence in this story.

THE EDGE OF HONOR

San Diego, California, September 1969

Brian Holcomb stood naked at the darkened bedroom window, staring out at the park across the street. The pale bark of the gray eucalyptus trees was daubed in orange from the glow of the new sodium-vapor lights along Balboa Park Drive. At least something around here had a glow on; he sure as hell did not. Maddy, his wife, spoke to him from the bed.

Brian, its all right. Brian, come back to bed.

Its not all right. Nothings all right. Its deployment day, and Im going away for seven months, and youre miserable, and I cant even

Brian, please. Its our last time to be together. Please, lets not fight. Im sorry Im being such a bitch about the deployment. But come back to bed. Brian sighed and turned around. The sight of Maddy in the soft light of the bedroom, that mass of blond hair, her lovely face, her glorious breasts bared above the sheet, was still enough to take his breath away, even after almost four years of marriage. So then why the hell on this, their last night, morning, whatever, together, couldnt he perform?

As if reading his thought, Maddy patted the bed next to her.

Come on, Brian. I hate it when youre right there but not right here beside me. We should have just cuddled, like we agreed. We both know this is a lousy time for sex. Please?

He walked back over to his side of the bed. She was rightas usual. He sat down on the edge of the bed and she slid across, folding her arms around him, her hair enveloping the side of his face. Her skin was warm against his back.

Hey? she whispered. Well get through this; everyone else seems to manage. This isnt the first ship that has to go to WESTPAC. Ive got my job, and the rest of the wives

Whom you dont like very much.

I do like them. Its more a question of not having very much in common with them, Brian. I work, most of them dont, and we have no

Yeah.

He felt her stiffen slightly, and the blade of anger from the night before slipped between them again. They had gone out to dinner at Mr.

As, an expensive restaurant overlooking the San Diego skyline, whose tall windows gave a cockpit-level view of the jetliners as they swooped down into Lindbergh Field below. Brian had thought of going out to dinner as an activity, something to do that would eat up three or four hours of the last night.

As Maddy had fretted more and more about the ships departure, everything they did had acquired the adjective last: the last supper, the last night, the last morningthe last everything, because it was now deployment day.

He had made the mistake of mentioning children again, and the last evening had gone right off the last tracks.

And now, in just a few short hours, he would get up, shower, button and zip into his whites, and as It. Brian Holcomb, USN, Weapons officer in USS John Bell Hood, go down to the ship at the Thirty-second Street Naval Station and sail away to the Vietnam War for the next seven months.

And Maddy, his beautiful young wife of three-point something years, was not taking it too well. The ships schedule had not helped. The thirty days prior to deployment were called PORN: Preparation for Overseas Movement.

Perversely, as far as families were concerned, the closer a ship got to deployment day, the more time it demanded of its officers. The PORN preparations were seemingly endless as the avalanche of supplies, repair parts, new people, the latest tactical manuals, and a flurry of final grooming and repairs on the ships weapons and operations systems all conspired to produce twelve hour workdays at precisely the time that the wives tended to become clinging vines, desperately anxious for every moment of contact. Brians nights at home during the last thirty days had been punctuated by dramatic mood swings on Maddys part, from loving wife who poured on the affection to shrill harridan who railed against the deployment, the Vietnam War, and his Navy career in general.

The hell of it was that he was excited to be going.

He was beginning a prime assignment aboard a modern guided-missile ship, and they were bound for the Red Crown station up in the Gulf of Tonkin, to the heart of the carrier-air-war action on the one ship that controlled the skies over the Gulf, Damn it, he shouldnt have to feel guilty about that. And more than that, this assignment was a make-or-break tour of duty: His promotion to lieutenant commander depended on his doing very well in this ship. Maddy was not helping. As a matter of fact, Maddy was on the verge of doing some damage. On the other hand, he fully recognized that she was acting this way only because he was going away.

He turned to her then, putting his arms around her, breathing in her sweet, familiar fragrance, his face pressed against her throat as she hugged him. He knew that all the noise was not aimed at him, but at what was coming for herthe empty apartment, the empty bed, long-delayed letters in place of a touch in the night. He would be in the thick of fleet operations in the Gulf of Tonkin and she would face the same empty routine day after day. His heart ached, not for the first time, at the thought of being away from her for seven long months.

At moments like this, even he was willing to think of the Navy as the god damned Navy, lately her favorite expression. And then there was that enormously sensitive nerve about children upon which he had just touched. He wanted kids; she did, too, but she had set what he felt was an impossible condition: Well have a family only when youre going to be home to help. A successful career in the seagoing Navy did not necessarily lend itself to that proposition. They had both finally realized that the whole subject of starting a family was becoming a dangerous minefield, a complication that neither of them needed, especially just now. He sighed again.