Below decks, the USS Eldridge was exactly what Sal expected: narrow passageways, low ceilings, the constant hum of engines and ventilation, and the smell of approximately two hundred young men living in close quarters with limited access to fresh air. It smelled like sweat and steel and the faint chemical tang of cleaning solution that had given up years ago.
But underneath all that, there was something else. A vibration. A hum that came not from the engines but from somewhere else—somewhere above, where the cables wrapped around the hull like copper snakes. It was the same frequency as the generators on the pier, but deeper, more pervasive. Like the ship itself was humming.
Sal pushed the thought away. He was here for a toilet. Everything else was someone else's problem.
The mess deck was ahead. He could hear it before he saw it—the clatter of trays, the murmur of conversation, and underneath it all, a strange wet coughing sound, like a room full of people trying not to breathe.
He pushed through the door and stopped.
The mess deck was a large space, maybe forty feet long, filled with tables and benches bolted to the deck. About fifty sailors sat at those tables, hunched over trays of powdered eggs and something that might have been sausage. And every single one of them was eating with one hand while holding something over their nose and mouth with the other. Handkerchiefs. Napkins. In one case, what appeared to be a copy of the Saturday Evening Post with a hole torn in the middle.
A few of them looked up when Sal entered. Their eyes held the desperate look of men who had seen things. Terrible things. Things involving plumbing.
A young ensign detached himself from the nearest table and hurried over. He couldn't have been more than twenty-two, with the kind of eager, unlined face that hadn't yet learned to hate its job. His uniform was crisp. His hair was combed. His eyes were wide with a kind of religious awe.
"Mr. Lombardi? Thank God. Thank God." He grabbed Sal's hand and shook it vigorously. "We heard you were coming. The chief said there was a man, a plumber, who could fix anything. We've been waiting. We've been suffering."
Sal gently extracted his hand. "Easy, son. I'm just a guy with a snake. Which way to the head?"
The ensign pointed toward a door at the far end of the mess deck. His hand trembled slightly. "Through there. Be careful. It's... it's bad."
"It's always bad. That's why they call it work."
Sal walked toward the door. Behind him, fifty sailors watched him go with the expressions of men watching a hero march into battle.
The crew head was a masterpiece of poor design.
Three toilets lined one wall, two sinks the other. The space between them was exactly wide enough for one person to stand in, provided that person wasn't carrying a toolbag and wasn't claustrophobic and hadn't eaten recently. The floor was non-slip grating that looked like it hadn't been cleaned since the ship was commissioned. The walls were grey steel, covered here and there with handprints that had been there so long they'd become part of the decor.
The first two toilets were fine. Functional. Innocent. The third toilet was a war crime.
Water had risen to within a quarter-inch of the rim. Floating on the surface was a constellation of debris—bits of paper, something that might have been food, and one object that Sal couldn't immediately identify. The water itself was the color of strong tea with a hint of swamp. The smell was... well. The smell was why the sailors were eating with gas masks on.
Sal surveyed the scene with the practiced eye of a professional. He'd seen worse. Not much worse, but worse. There was the time in '38 when a whole boarding house's sewer line backed up into the basement during a wedding reception. There was the time in '41 when a submarine's head failed during a training exercise and seventeen men had to be evacuated. There was the time he'd found a dead raccoon in a pipe and the raccoon had friends.
This was bad. But it wasn't the worst.
He pulled on his rubber gloves. They went up to his elbows, yellow and thick, the kind that said "I have seen things and so will you." He took out his snake—Giacomo, named after his favorite uncle, who had also been flexible, strong, and prone to disappearing into dark places for extended periods.
Giacomo went down. Sal fed him slowly, feeling the way the pipe breathed back at him. Every drain had a personality. Some were easy—straight shots with no resistance. Others were complicated—twisty, cluttered, full of old grudges. This one was very complicated.
Giacomo caught. Not a hard catch—not the solid thunk of a major blockage—but a soft resistance. Like fabric. Like paper. Like something that shouldn't be there.
Sal pulled gently. The snake came up with a wet, sad sound. Attached to the end was a wad of paper—soaked, crumpled, but still recognizable as several pages folded together.
He fished it out of the bowl with his gloved hand and carried it to the sink. He rinsed it carefully, letting the water run until it ran clear, then unfolded it on the metal counter.
It was a letter. Several letters, actually, written on different paper in different handwriting. Love letters, by the look of them. One was from someone named Betty. One was from someone named Margaret. One was from someone named Dolores. All of them said variations on the same thing: I miss you. I'm waiting for you. Don't do anything stupid. Come home safe.
Sal sighed. Young love. Young sailors. Young sailors with girlfriends in multiple ports, trying to hide evidence of their complicated romantic lives in the only private space on the ship.
He ran Giacomo again to make sure the line was clear. Nothing. Whatever had caused the backup was now in his sink, dripping gently onto the metal.
He flushed three times. The water swirled, hesitated, then drained with a sound that might have been relief.
Problem solved.
He was gathering the letters—he'd return them to whoever lost them, that was the rule—when the door opened behind him.
Sal turned.
The man standing there was tall and thin, with the kind of pale, exhausted face that came from too many late nights and not enough meals. He wore civilian clothes—a rumpled tweed jacket over an open-collared white shirt, trousers that hadn't seen an iron in weeks. A cigarette burned in his right hand, forgotten, the ash long enough to fall at any moment. His eyes had bags under them that could have qualified as steerage luggage on an ocean liner.
"You the plumber?" The man's voice was quiet, measured, the voice of someone used to thinking before speaking.
"Last I checked." Sal wiped his hands on a rag. "Toilet's fixed. Kid tried to flush his correspondence. Happens more than you'd think."
The man stared at the letters on the sink. Then at Sal's tools. Then back at the letters. He seemed to be processing information very slowly, like a computer built in 1943.
"I'm Lt. Commander Hollister." The man extended a hand, then seemed to remember he was holding a cigarette, then seemed to forget, then finally just nodded instead. "I'm in charge of... the project."
"The cable thing."
Hollister's eyes snapped into focus. For a moment, the exhaustion lifted, replaced by something sharper. "You noticed the cables."
Sal shrugged. "Hard to miss. They're wrapped around the whole ship. Looks like someone's trying to turn her into a Christmas present."
Hollister almost smiled. It was a tiny movement—the barest twitch at the corner of his mouth—but Sal caught it. "It's degaussing. For magnetic mines."
"Sure." Sal picked up his toolbag. "I know degaussing. We did it on the New Jersey last year. Those cables ran straight, not wrapped. This is different."
Hollister stared at him. It was the kind of stare scientists gave you when you accidentally said something interesting—like a dog suddenly reciting Shakespeare, or a toilet suddenly explaining unified field theory. "What do you know about unified field theory?"
Sal hefted his toolbag onto his shoulder. "I know a pipe's a pipe. Water goes in, water goes out. You put too much pressure in one spot, something's gonna give. That's my theory. Unified enough for you?"
He walked past Hollister and headed for the ladder. Behind him, he heard the scientist mutter something that sounded like "extraordinary" but might have been "impossible." With eggheads, it was hard to tell.
ns216.73.216.1da2
and then Add to home screen.