The Command Read Online Free PDF Page B

daughter would be with them before she went to Hollins on a basketball scholarship. What was he doing? Marty said Rosa was history. The last he’d heard, she was a receptionist at a funeral home in Chattanooga. Chesko said that sucked. Marty said it actually didn’t, the sex was the same, but the dishes piled up. And he was on
Horn,
ginning up to head back to the Gulf.
    â€œHorn?
No shit, you on the fuckin’ USS
PMS?
” Chesko put down his beer. “Hey, know why they let women in the navy? So the officers can fuck face to face for a change.”
    â€œWomen?” said Devlin.
    Marchetti said, “Not in my work center, thank God. They’re mostly in the hole with the snipes.”
    â€œWe got them all over the yard now. Hard hats and tool belts and little bouncing cheeks. Their minds are on their fuckin’ wombs, not their fuckin’ jobs.”
    â€œNot like some guys I know, do their thinking with their dicks.” Marchetti toasted him with his burger.
    â€œSo, what’s it like?”
    â€œFuck if I know. They only been there a couple weeks,” Marchetti said. “I don’t think they’re gonna stay, myself. It’s tough duty, destroyers.”
    Devlin didn’t say anything. Marchetti got the message very loud: the only tough duty was whatever SEALs did. He didn’t buy it. He figured, him and Devlin, even money. But it wasn’t worth starting trouble over.
    â€œIt’s just buying votes,” Chesko said. “Fucking liberals, trying to brownnose the lezzbos. Like at the yard. We’re plowing billions into ship mods so they can sit down to pee while we’re scrubbing sonar upgrades because there’s no funding. How about you, Chief? When you gonna get them in the SEALs?”
    The waitress came over to check on them. All three men watched her ass as she walked away. “We’ll never see them in special ops,” Devlin said. “I get a few at the range. Some of ’em can shoot. But that’s not all there is to it.”
    Chesko said, “Take my advice, don’t let it start. I remember when they first put them on the tugs, my fuckup detector went off. Most of ’em was dykes, but if they got pregnant, they got a admin discharge automatic. That was bad enough, you train them and then they want out, so they forget to take their pill. But now, babysitting’s gonna be part of the defense budget. Like, they’re thinking, now the Russians are gone, we don’t have an enemy anymore, what do we need the military for?”
    â€œWe’ve got other enemies,” Devlin said.
    â€œSure, this is just a breathing space. But Slick Willy’s so hot to load us up with fruits and feminazis, sometimes I wonder if he’s actually trying to fuck us, so when the fucking Chinese land … Hey, I ain’t no dittohead.”
    Marchetti said, “I like Rush all right. He’s got the right idea.”
    â€œWell, he’s out there sometimes … but, like, one of my collateral duties, I get to escort people to the decommissionings and shit. Last week I get this female E-8, she’s bulging out to here in her maternityuniform. I still got scars from biting my tongue. I wanted to ask her what the fuck she was gonna contribute if war broke out the next day. And some guy probably’s still walking around a first class because of her.”
    â€œIt’s not gonna be good,” Marchetti said. “You can tell that already.”
    â€œAsk any guy on the tenders. They’ll tell you, it’s a circus.” Chesko told a story about a salvage and rescue ship out of Little Creek whose CO got caught porking the ops officer in the backseat of a ship’s van the command chief had fixed up as a love wagon. “And even if they ain’t fucking themselves silly, one thing always made me respect a guy was, he went through the wickets to get what’s on his sleeve. All these split-tails