The Fighting Agents (Men at War 4)

Joe Garvey hadn't wanted to be a radioman when he joined the Navy. He had wanted to go to sea as maybe a gunner on a twin-Bofors 20mm, something like that, maybe on a destroyer. Maybe even in a submarine. If he had known more about the Navy, he would have kept his mouth shut about having a ham license. But he'd been a boot, and when they'd asked him, he'd told about being a ham. So they gave him a code test, at twenty words per minute, and he'd flown through that; he'd been copying forty words a minute since he was fifteen.

So he'd gone right from Great Lakes Naval Training Station to Mare Island as a radioman striker--a USN enlisted man working to qualify for a rating--instead of going to sea. And they'd made him seaman first and given him the exam for radioman third, and he'd passed that with a 98.5. And then he'd been on the next promotion list. And six months after that, he'd made 97.4 on the exam for radioman second.

And when he'd asked his chief about maybe getting sea duty, his chief told him the Navy needed him right where he was; there weren't all that many guys around who could handle a key the way he could; and it made more sense to have the best operators in an important commo center, rather than afloat, where they might average maybe fifteen minutes a day on the air.

The first interesting thing that had happened to him since he'd been in the Navy was the Chief coming to him and telling him to pack his gear, that he'd been placed on TDY to Washington, and that they were holding the courier plane for him.

A couple of times at Mare Island, when he couldn't think of a way to get out of it, he'd sometimes had two beers, or even three, but he was not used to just sitting at a bar and drinking one beer after another.

They had been treating him real well at the Navy Yard. Instead of what he expected--a bunk and a wall locker in one of the big bays reserved for in transit white hats--he had a private room, with a desk and even a telephone.

"These are chief's quarters," the master-at-arms had told him.

"If anybody asks what you're doing in them, you tell them to see me."

"What am I doing in them?" Garvey had asked.

"Let's just say that's where Chief Ellis said to put you," the master-at-arms said.

"What about formations?"

"You don't have to stand no formations," the master-at-arms said.

"All you got to do is be available, in case they need you. You can go anywhere you want to go, so long as there's a telephone where you're going and I know where you are and what the number is--and you can get back here in thirty minutes. You want to go get your ashes hauled, Garvey, just make sure she's got a telephone and that you'll be able to pull your pants on and get back here in thirty minutes."

Joe Garvey had not been summoned, and neither had he gotten his ashes hauled. The truth of the matter was that they had shown him a Technicolor movie in boot camp that had scared the hell out of him. Guys with balls as big as basketballs, and guys with their dicks rotting off. And the chief who had given that lecture had said that if you didn't want to get promoted and wanted to spend the rest of your time in the Navy cleaning grease traps or chipping paint, catching a dose of clap was a good way to do that.

The smart thing to do, the chief had said, was to keep your pecker in your pocket and wait until you got home and could stick it in some nice, clean, respectable girl you knew wasn't going to give you nothing that would fuck up your life permanently.

There were a couple of nice girls Joe Garvey knew back in Louisville, but none who had given him any hint that they would go to the movies with him, much less let him do that to them, but he had decided to keep his pecker in his pocket anyway. He didn't want his dick rotting off before he had a chance to use it.

And he wanted to get promoted. He was already a petty officer second, and if you were a skinny little shit who wore glasses, he knew that was a good thing to be. What he had wanted most out of life, at least until they'd put him on a plane at Mare Island and flown him here, was to make chief radioman.

That wasn't such an impossible dream. Not only was he one hell of a radio operator--he could knock out fifty words a minute and read sixty--but he knew about radios.

There were a lot of radiomen who were good operators, and there were a lot of radiomen who were good technicians, but there weren't all that many who were both. Since the Navy wasn't going to send him to sea, the next best thing was to make chief radioman. Nobody would believe that a chief radioman had never been to sea. Or if that came out, people would understand that the Navy had its reasons for keeping him ashore. If he was a chief, it wouldn't matter that he was a skinny little shit who wore glasses. A chief was a chief, period.

And making radioman first was going to be easier than he had thought it would be. He was going to go back to Mare Island when they were through with him with a letter of commendation from a goddamned Navy captain.

"Makes you sound like John Paul Jones, Garvey," Chief Ellis had told him.

"I

know, 'cause I wrote it."

The next time the promotion board sat, he was probably going to be the only radioman second going for first with a letter of commendation like that.

just kept his mouth shut, he was going to make radioman first, and a little later, he would make chief radioman.

But that was no longer good enough. He didn't want to sit out the war in the commo section at Mare Island. He wanted to get into the war. When somebody asked him, later, what he'd done in the war, he didn't want to have to tell them he'd been at Mare Island, period.

And he thought he had figured out what to do about it.

"Puck it!" Radioman Second Joe Garvey said aloud, which made the bartender look at him strangely.

Then he got off the bar stool, shrugged his arms into his peacoat, put his hat at a jaunty angle on his head, and walked, somewhat unsteadily, out of the bar of the petty officers' club.

He didn't stop to pick up his Liberty Card. He was afraid the master-at-arms would smell the beer on him and not give it to him. He had been given an "any hour in and out" duty card, which would get him past the Marine MP at the gate.