WW III - 10 - Payback by Ian Slater

Author:Ian Slater
Language: eng
Format: mobi, epub
Published: 2012-02-21T00:00:00+00:00

“Have a nice swim?” Sal asked Aussie, who was emerging from the Sea Stallion’s downblast. His sodden uniform was so plastered against his body by wind and water that it reminded Cuso of the wrap he’d seen on the Special Forces “palletized” equipment, by now safely stowed below in the hangar deck where the wrap gave the crude rotorless helicopter shape a distinctly ungainly mummified appearance.

“I said,” repeated Sal as he walked behind Aussie, “did you have a nice swim?”

“Piss off!” Aussie replied, following John Cuso, who was leading the sodden Aussie below to one of the few shower-equipped two-man staterooms, Cuso explaining, by way of ameliorating Aussie’s embarrassment, that the pilots were probably all aft, shooting the bull in their informal “Dirty Shirt” wardroom. But Aussie wasn’t in the mood to hear what anyone else was doing—all he wanted was a hot shower, his desire for instant warmth increased by a bone-chilling blast of wind that Salvini also felt as they passed from the gray-tiled section of the carrier’s gallery deck into “blue-tile country.” Here, the cold air Salvini and Aussie had just experienced came from the computer-cooling fans in the five highly classified command and ultrasecret blue-tiled communications rooms, including the ship’s Signal Exploitation Space, or SES.

“Take all the time you need,” John Cuso told the still-dripping Aussie, who saw fresh, knife-edge-pressed Navy-issue khakis; a neatly folded, almost blindingly white crew-neck T-shirt next to the trousers, along with a pair of thick, woolen khaki socks and black boots that were so highly polished, Aussie could see Sal’s maddeningly smug face on the boot’s toe piece, together with a face he didn’t recognize.

“Master Chief Schmidt here,” Cuso told them, “will take you two gentlemen forward to the SpecOp briefing room. You two can spend the night in this stateroom. The other seven members of your team have been similarly billeted on this deck.”

“Don’t want to put any of you guys out,” said Sal as Aussie, his teeth literally chattering, peeled off his soaked underwear.

“You’re not putting anyone out,” John Cuso assured Salvini. “No one uses this stateroom.”

“Room to spare, eh?” said Sal.

Cuso gave him an enigmatic smile. “You’ll have to toss for which one of you gets the upper rack.”

Salvini looked at the two-tiered bunk then at Aussie, telling Cuso, “This guy farts wherever you put him!”

Cuso nodded good-naturedly. “Well, the boat’s doc tells us there’s a study says those who pass wind frequently live longer.”

“Geez,” said Sal. “Aussie’s set to outdo Methuselah!”

“Piss off!” came a voice behind the shower curtain, followed by a hissing stream of hot water, its fog billowing out from the stall.

Cuso grinned. “See you gentlemen at lunch.”

After Cuso left, Salvini glanced about the sparsely furnished stateroom. There was barely enough room to contain two curtained bunks and two short-backed Naugahyde chairs, the remainder of this tiny space crammed with a basin, mirror, two storage-space drawers, a Houdini-like shower stall, and two small flip-down writing desks.

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