Peter T. Deutermann - Official privilege

OFFICIAL PRIVILEGE by P.T. Deuterman

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.

acknowledgments

I would like to thank my editors at St. Martins. Thanks are also due to the lady at the Philadelphia Medical Examiners office and a forensic scientist in the Georgia Bureau of Investigation who asked to remain anonymous; to Debby and Kathy and Aubrey for critical first readings; to Andy Fahy for help with the battleship layout; to the Naval History Division in the Washington Navy Yard; to the public affairs office of the Washington Metropolitan Police; and to two young army captains at Georgia Military College for help with some army organizational material. Special thanks as well to my agent, Nick Ellison, and his trusty sidekick, Liz, for their continuing encouragement.

This book is dedicated to those officers who attain flag or general officer rank in the armed forces and continue to exercise the hands-on, personally-involved style of leadership that got them their stars.

april 13, 1994

THE PHILADELPHIA NAVAL SHIPYARD

im not gonna let those bastards scare me, Benny thought. I know what those dumb guineas are up to, a couple of em probably waiting down here in the dark for me, gonna jump outta one of these hatches and try to scare my ass. He stopped, then squinted through the scratched faceplate of the mask at the hull diagram, trying to shine his hard-hat helmet light down on the diagram and still keep an eye out in the darkened second deck passageway. Sons a bitches, screwing off up there at the air lock while I go nitrogen diving down here, doing their damn job.

Benny was nineteen, a high school graduate, and he was trying like hell to convert an intern job in Production into a full-time job in the Philadelphia Naval Shipyard.

That was probably why the ships supe had told \ him to go to the battleship and do a no-shit sounding! andsecurity tour. Those goof-offs over in Shop 72 were [ reporting everything secure, but the supe had seen i them up on the main deck, sitting around when they were supposed to be inside, going space by space through the Engineering Department. You go do it, . Benny, he said. I know its a little spooky in there, no lights and everything, but theyll set you up with the breathing rigs, and you go through the main holes in the Wisconsin and do the security tour right.

Benny was doing it right, but it was more than just a little spooky down herecold black steel, some of it five, six inches thick, creating total darkness once you went through the air lock on the main deck.

There had been a temporary lighting string hung in the overhead of the main decks athwartships passageway, but once you went down to the second deck, it was like total darkness, man. He had a single air-tank rig on with a full facemask, because, below the main deck, the mothballed battlewagon had been backfilled with nitrogen gas to displace all the oxygen. No oxygen, no oxidation nothing rusted. And no oxygen meant nobody else should be down here, eitherexcept maybe a couple of wiseasses from Shop 72, waiting to scare the new kid.

He kept walking up the passageway, looking for the hatch down to Gasoline Alley and the main engineering spaces, flicking his helmet light from side to side, careful to step over the infamous knee-knockers, those steel reinforcement frames that stuck up out of the deck every twenty feet. He was coldhe should have worn the jacket, like that guy had said. But that was the same guy whod been talking about ghosts and the souls of dead sailors wandering the passageways, rolling his eyes, and Benny wasnt having any of that stuff.

He finally came to an armored hatch; he stepped closer to read the brass plate on which the hatch number was engraved. Then he consulted the hull diagram again. Bingo. Down this sucker to the third deck, from which access to the fire rooms and engine rooms of the battleship could be gained. He pointed his light down the steep ladder, marveling at the four-inch-thick deck through which the hatch passed and the heavy hydraulic arms supporting the hatch. What the hell was that! He snapped his head around, but there was no peripheral vision in these damn masks.

Hed had the sense that somebody might be following him in the darkness, **skip**but if there was, he knew it had to be one of those guys, come down after him to spook him. Hed seen other breathing rigs stashed up there by the air lock. Damn riggershe wondered how long it had been since any of them had come down here to check the main spaces.

He stepped onto the first rung of the ladder and then reached up and snapped off the helmet light. He blinked at the total darkness. He had hoped to catch a flash of light behind him in case one of the guys was back there, but there was nothingnothing but the blackness and the sound of his breathing in the mask.

The other place where the sun dont friggin shine, man, the rigger chief had said. Its a friggin tomb down there, man, and youre gonna see why nobody in the shop wants to make the tour. Besides, they got all those electronic flooding alarms and shitwhat do they need a guy to go down there for?

But the ships supe had laid it out: Because theyre supposed to do it once a month, go down there and physically inspect the main spaces, looking for the one thing that can spell disaster in a mothballed shipwater.

The bilges are supposed to be bone-dry, so if theres water, theres a goddamn leak somewhere, and thats serious shit, because rising water can short out the flooding alarms, and then you get what the snipes call a no-shitter going, that big-ass battleship sitting there without one single swingin dick on board and water rising in an engine room.

One of the mothballed heavy cruisers over in the west yard had settled right to the bottom over the period of a month, flooding out the opened steam turbines and eight boilers left opened under a dry layup.

They had had to scrap the ship.

He checked the area behind him, but there was still only blackness. If there was somebody back there, they wouldnt be able to see him if he just stepped down the hatch, so thats what he did, going down carefully in the complete darkness, one step at a time, gently bumping his tank on the hatch coaming and then the individual treads of the ladder. When he felt his foot reach the solid-steel deck at the bottom of the ladder, he turned around and looked back up to where the top of the ladder should be. And he waited, watching for the telltale glow of another helmet light up there. But there was still nothing, and then he remembered he had eight main spaces to get through and about fifty minutes of air left in the tank.

Screw it, he thought. They wanna screw around, let em. He snapped his helmet light back on and consulted the diagram, his breathing again audible in the mask.

Start from aft and work forward. Lets see where the hell is aft?

This way. First space to hit was the aftermost engine room, the hatch all the way aft, port side.

Over the next half hour, he physically inspected each main engineering space, stepping through the hatch from Gasoline Alley, shining his flashlight down through the deck gratings three levels down to the bilge, checking for any glint of water. He worked his way toward the bow of the ship until he came to the last hatch, number one fire room, port side, all the way forward.

The hatches had all looked much smaller than he had expected them to be.