Page 252 of Winter of the World (The Century 2)

Eddie stood up abruptly and pushed his stool back. "Don't you touch me," he said.

Chuck said: "Take it easy, Eddie."

"There's no rule in the navy says I have to be pawed by this old queen!"

Vandermeier said drunkenly: "What did you call me?"

Eddie said: "If he touches me again, I swear I'll knock his ugly head off."

Chuck said: "Captain Vandermeier, sir, I know a much better place than this. Would you like to go there?"

Vandermeier looked confused. "What?"

Chuck improvised: "A smaller, quieter place--like this, but more intimate. Do you know what I mean?"

"Sounds good!" The captain drained his glass.

Chuck took Vandermeier's right arm and gestured to Eddie to take the left. They led the drunk captain outside.

Luckily, a taxi was waiting in the gloom of the alley. Chuck opened the car door.

At that point, Vandermeier kissed Eddie.

The captain threw his arms around him, pressed his lips to Eddie's, then said: "I love you."

Chuck's heart filled with fear. There was no good ending to this now.

Eddie punched Vandermeier in the stomach, hard. The captain grunted and gasped. Eddie hit him again, in the face this time. Chuck stepped between them. Before Vandermeier could fall down, Chuck bundled him into the backseat of the taxi.

He leaned through the window and gave the driver a ten-dollar bill. "Take him home, and keep the change," he said.

The taxi pulled away.

Chuck looked at Eddie. "Oh, boy," he said. "Now we're in trouble."

iv

But Eddie Parry was never charged with the crime of assaulting an officer.

Captain Vandermeier showed up at the Old Administration Building next morning with a black eye, but he made no accusation. Chuck figured it would ruin the man's career if he admitted he had got into a fight at the Band Round the Hat. All the same everyone was talking about his bruise. Bob Strong said: "Vandermeier claims he slipped on a patch of oil in his garage, and hit his face on the lawn mower, but I think his wife socked him. Have you seen her? She looks like Jack Dempsey."

That day, the cryptanalysts in the basement told Admiral Nimitz that the Japanese would attack Midway on June 4. More specifically, the Japanese force would be one hundred and seventy-five miles north of the atoll at seven A.M.

They were almost as confident as they sounded.

Eddie was gloomy. "What can we do?" he said when he and Chuck met for lunch. He worked in naval intelligence too, and he knew the Japanese strength as revealed by the codebreakers. "The Japs have two hundred ships at sea--practically their entire navy--and how many do we have? Thirty-fiv

e!"

Chuck was not so glum. "But their strike force is only a quarter of their strength. The rest are the occupation force, the diversion force, and the reserves."

"So? A quarter of their strength is still more than our entire Pacific Fleet!"

"The actual Japanese strike force has only four aircraft carriers."

"But we have just three." Eddie pointed with his ham sandwich at the smoke-blackened carrier in the dry dock, with workmen swarming all over her. "And that includes the broken-down Yorktown."

"Well, we know they're coming, and they don't know we're lying in wait."

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