The Edge of Honor by P. T. Deutermann Read Free Book Online Page A

though—where can I find you?”
    Bullet, nicknamed for the conical shape of his bald head, appeared to think for a moment.
    “I be back in the electrical shop in a li’l bit. Be seem’ you there.”
    “You got it.”
    Bullet moved on, striding toward the scullery with what appeared to be great dignity but what was really an effort to avoid hitting his head on the maze of pipes and cables bundled against the overhead.
    Bartley finished his lunch and got up from the table, followed by Rockheart. They took their trays back to the steaming scullery, where trays and silverware were turned in through a window counter to a pair of red faced, heavily perspiring mess cooks. The mess cooks scraped the trays, banged food scraps into large garbage cans under the counter, and flung the silverware into a deep sink filled with very hot water. The trays were then tossed onto a conveyor belt that led to the scullery machine itself. Despite the fans and the exhaust vents, it was over one hundred degrees in the scullery; the men worked fast to get the job done.
    Rockheart reversed course after depositing his tray, walking back toward the forward end of the mess decks, nodding hello to some of his buddies at their tables.
    Forward of the mess decks he went down Broadway, the central passageway containing the barbershop, the personnel and disbursing offices, the post office, and the ship’s store, with its eternal line. Past the post office, Broadway narrowed down and then ended in a T-junction, intersecting an athwartships passageway. The blank white bulkhead taking up the forward side of the junction was the after bulkhead of the missile magazine. Rock heart turned right, walked twenty feet, and then made a left into a narrower passageway that continued forward toward the bow. After stepping through two hatches, he stopped at a doorway labeled forward crew’s head.
    He looked up and down the passageway before stepping through the door into the humid, astringent atmosphere of the head. There were six urinals, eight toilet stalls, and six shower stalls crammed into a compartment that was barely twenty feet by twenty-five. The smell of pine-oil disinfectant mixed with salt water misting up from the urinals easily overwhelmed the efforts of the two exhaust fans in the overhead.
    He walked across the herringbone-patterned stainless steel deck to the urinal farthest from the door and went through the motions while examining the row of toilet stalls behind him to see whether anyone else was in the head. They all appeared to be empty, which made sense.
    At this hour, most of the crew was grabbing a nooner before turn-to went again at 1300. The only sounds in the head came from the constantly flushing urinals and the vent fans laboring against the noxious atmosphere. Making one last visual sweep of the compartment, he stepped up on his toes and reached into one of the large cableways that ran through the overhead of the compartment. Feeling among the bulky armored cables and smaller wires, his fingers closed on a bundle of soft plastic-covered blocks, each the size of a school eraser. He grabbed one and swiftly inserted it into his Jockey shorts, then zipped up. The feel of the plastic against his genitals was erotic, like a girl’s panties.
    He concentrated on something else immediately, such as the prospect of getting caught.
    The block gave him enough of a bulge without adding complications.
    He left the head and retraced his steps through the passageways, passing back through the mess decks. He had to make his way all the way to the electrical shop, which was on the second deck, underneath the fantail.
    There he would meet Bullet, who would give him three hundred dollars for the single block of powdered Mexican hashish. Bullet would then break the block down into small individual tokes and sell them through his network to customers throughout the ship.
    Rocky smiled as he walked aft. He was going to be a rich man before he finished his tour