Chapter 5
The red in his face left it the way color leaves something that has been sitting in sunlight too long, all at once and without warning. His shoulders settled into a posture I had seen before, not in admirals specifically, but in men of a certain type who have just understood that the ground they believed they were standing on was never what they thought.
"This is impossible," he said.
I tilted my head. "Is it?"
The MP who had first opened the folder had been standing very still for thirty seconds. Now he looked directly at Hayes with the expression of a junior officer who has just understood that the most important professional moment of his career is happening right now, in the next ten seconds, and that how he handles it is going to be in a document that people read for a long time.
"Sir," he said, "you need to contact Washington immediately."
The formation did not move. Flags moved in the harbor wind. The sun was exactly where it had been when Hayes's hand came up, because it had been less than four minutes, and the world did not rearrange itself to mark the occasion. It simply continued.
Hayes looked at me once more. The look had nothing in it that resembled what it had held four minutes earlier.
"Master Chief," he said.
"Admiral," I said.
He handed the folder back to the MP and walked toward the administration building with the specific gait of a man who has understood that the walk he is taking is the last walk he is taking in the capacity he has been walking in, and who is choosing to take it with his back straight because some things are old enough to hold onto past the point where everything else has gone.
The MP stood beside me.
"Master Chief," he said quietly, "do you need medical attention?"
I touched my lip with two fingers. "I'm fine," I said.
"Yes, ma'am," he said.
May you like
The formation was dismissed six minutes later by the officer of the deck, who handled it with the calm competence of someone who had decided that normalcy was the appropriate register for the remainder of the afternoon. The sailors broke from their rows with the particular energy of people who have witnessed something and are not yet sure what to do with it.
I walked back to the gate.
