by James Philip
“Because of me?” He asked, straightening.
Caroline shook her head.
“No. Yes, I don’t know. We should probably talk about that, but... Look, you’ll be hearing from the Air Force’s Office of Personnel Management in due course. My program has been shut down. I don’t know if it makes any difference but I’m no longer your doctor.”
Nathan had recovered.
He wiped perspiration from his face.
“I didn’t know if you’d want to see me again,” he confessed sheepishly.
“I didn’t know if you’d want to see me again,” she responded, pushing her Ray Bans on top of her hair which today was a little windblown. Not so long ago she would have regarded going out in public without her hair severely clipped and banded as being positively brazen. “I only got back this morning,” Caroline went on, seizing the moment. “I wanted to see you before I looked for somewhere to stay...”
“Oh, right,” the man muttered. “You know you can stay here as long as you need...”
“You’re okay with that?”
Nathan nodded jerkily. “Sure…”
Caroline reached for the handle of her case; the man got there first.
“I should shower,” Nathan said once they were inside the house.
“You go ahead. I’ll make coffee, yes?”
“Yeah, sure...”
The woman realized she was trembling.
What am I doing?
She started to boil water, and to check through the cupboards. Nathan was an Air Force creature, Spartan by nature and most of the shelves were empty. Tidy, very tidy, everything in its place, clean. He would make some girl a perfect husband.
She listened to the plumbing knock and rumble before the shower kicked in. The dry board inner walls, partitions really, of war-built house meant every sound travelled virtually unimpeded to every corner of it.
Caroline realized she had not moved for about a minute, possibly longer.
This is a stupid time to be having a panic attack!
She badly needed to put things in order in her head; she was missing something important. She was letting her fears tell her what was going on around her, not her eyes, not her hopes…
The kid had been pleased to see her.
He had carried her case inside...
She was not his physician now.
Oh God, this is ridiculous...
Nathan had shut the bathroom door.
In the gloom of the corridor she hesitated and then, as if in a dream, kicked off her shoes, squirmed out of her dress, dropped her brassier and knickers onto the floor and pushed open the door.
“Nathan?”
The shower screen was only part drawn.
His lean frame, his head and shoulders, lower arms and legs were tanned, and his torso unnaturally pale in the steamy light.
He looked at her nakedness.
She edged closer.
Shrugged her shoulders; hesitated for in that moment she was on the cusp of humiliated flight.
And then he smiled and hesitantly held out his hand.
Chapter 25
Wednesday 17th June 1964
US Consulate General, Bandra East, Bombay
Fifty-one year old Rear Admiral William Floyd Bringle had been wondering why the US Navy’s biggest carrier – the USS Kitty Hawk (CV-63) was a few feet longer and a few tons heavier than the flagship of the Mediterranean Fleet, the Independence (CV-62) – and the cream of the Pacific Fleet had been sent to the Indian Ocean on an extended, utterly pointless, ‘goodwill tour’ ever since he had received his sailing orders two months ago. The news that the Chief of Naval Operations, David McDonald, whom he had known for many years and personally liked and respected, wanted to speak to him as soon as Kitty Hawk dropped anchor in Harbor Bay in the murky, swirling waters of the Ulhas River, had given him hope that his nagging questions would, albeit belatedly, be answered.
A native of Covington, Tennessee, Bringle had graduated from the US Navy Academy at Annapolis in the class of 1937, serving on the flat top Saratoga until 1940 when he commenced his career as a naval aviator. After a busy war, a good war, his career had progressed with a predictable certainty. Promoted to flag rank after commissioning and taking the Kitty Hawk to sea for the first time in 1961, command of Carrier Division Seven was precisely the sort of posting that was liable to lead him one day, possibly before the end of the decade, into the chair currently occupied by David McDonald.
“Things in the Gulf are coming to a head, Bill,” the Chief of Naval Operations prefaced. There was a resigned weariness in McDonald’s manner that was anything but characteristic of the straight-talking Georgian and this instantly put Bringle on his guard. The two men were alone in a cool, air-conditioned white walled room that overlooked the grey waters of the Mithi River. In the quietness they might have been a hundred miles away from the bustle and commotion of the great port city, not less than a hundred yards from the nearest quay.
Bringle found no fault with the CNO’s summation.
“The British, the Australians and the New Zealanders have scraped the bottom of the barrel to put together their ‘Persian Gulf Squadron’,” he told his Chief. “HMS Centaur, their light carrier, is an unmodified World War II build. The pilots flying off her must be brave guys. How the Brits operate big fighters like their Sea Vixens off a deck that size is beyond me!”
McDonald forced a smile, tried to veil his misgivings. No matter the purpose of his visit protocol demanded that the fleet commander report to his superior officer before they got down to business.
“The British commander, a guy called Davey is a pleasant enough fellow and seems to know what he’s about,” Bringle went on. “He’s got a couple of cruisers, and half-a-dozen destroyers and frigates. The British are dug in on and around Abadan Island. They seem to have a pretty good local air defense radar coverage and co-ordination in that part of Iraq. If they make a stand they’ll hurt the Russians; that’s for sure. Of course, with us at their backs, together we’d do a lot more than just hurt the bastards!”
“Yeah,” the Chief of Naval Operations grunted. Unable to contain his roiling unease he stood up and began to pace, frowning to disguise his moral qualms. “Well, we’re not going to be getting into that sort of...territory, Bill.”
Bringle had also risen to his feet.
The men might be old acquaintances, friends of a sort; but a junior officer did not remain seated when a senior man was on his feet unless specifically ordered to sit down. He and McDonald were pre-war – pre-1941 – officers and they were unashamedly old-school about these things. Presently, the two men stood in the window, hands clasped behind them, staring out across the hazy waters of the Mithi River.
“The reason I came out to Bombay was because you’ve got a right to hear the orders I’m about to give you from the horse’s mouth, Bill.”
Bringle knew that was not good news.
“Oh, sir?”
“And after I’ve given you your orders I will understand if you feel yourself to be unable, for whatever reason, to obey them. In that event, I would have no alternative but to, with great regret, replace you in command of Carrier Division Seven.”
The other man began to color with hurt.
“The President has decided to make his peace with the Soviet Union,” McDonald continued, his voice a deadened monotone. “Peace at any cost. Peace as soon as possible for as long as possible. Unless or until there is a direct attack on the North American continent with nuclear weapons the President has absolutely ruled out the future employment of such weapons in any circumstances against the Soviet Union, or the armed forces of that country.”
Bringle glanced sidelong at the professional head of the Navy.
Did I just hear what I thought he just said?
McDonald stared fixedly to his front.
“Currently,” the Chief of Naval Operation bored on, “an apparently immovable obstacle stands between the US and the USSR declaring a bilateral arm
istice and signing a binding non-aggression pact. Despite the Administration’s repudiation of the US-UK Mutual Defense Treaty, and the effective disbandment of the old North Atlantic Treaty Alliance, the Russians still regard the United Kingdom and its Commonwealth ‘friends’ as allies of the United States. Negotiations have reached the stage whereby a commitment, in principle, to the staged withdrawal of sixty percent of all American naval and air assets from the Mediterranean by the fall has satisfied the Russians as to our intentions west of Suez; but the ongoing situation in the Persian Gulf is beginning to look like a game-breaker. Given that we have no boots on the ground in the region, Carrier Division Seven is the only card we have left in the game.”
Bringle carried on listened in silence, hating where he guessed this was going.
“Consideration has been given to issuing the British with an ultimatum to peacefully quit their positions in Abadan and to withdraw their naval forces to neutral ports in the Gulf. However, everything we know about the British tells us they would probably laugh in our faces. There is also the question of what we do if the British ‘go nuclear’ in the Gulf.”
The commander of Carrier Division Seven cleared his throat.
“What if they go for targets inside the Soviet Union?”
McDonald guffawed in wry unhappiness.
“What happens if they do something like that would be a decision that was made way above my pay grade, Bill.” He did not linger on this. “The Soviets are weak in air power in Iraq. Down south even HMS Centaur’s air group could hurt them really badly. Our best intelligence is that before Centaur steamed for the Gulf she took onboard the nukes stored in the British Far East special weapons facility at Hong Kong at the time of the October War.”
“And those devices are still onboard?”
McDonald nodded.
“We think so, yes.”
Both men knew that of the British carrier’s compliment of between sixteen and twenty aircraft - De Havilland Sea Vixens and Supermarine Scimitar subsonic interceptors – it was likely that several of the Sea Vixens were modified ‘nuclear ready’ aircraft.
“It will be Carrier Division Seven’s mission to ensure that HMS Centaur’s nuclear capability is not exercised,” McDonald declared. “Furthermore, Carrier Division Seven will operate so as to achieve local air superiority over the Persian Gulf so as to deny British V-Bomber and other potentially hostile strike aircraft known to be based in the region any opportunity to launch nuclear strike missions from bases around the Gulf. Once in situ in the Gulf Carrier Division Seven aircraft are authorized to fly deep penetration missions over Iran as far west as the Iraqi border to gather electronic intelligence, and to provide airborne command and control platforms for any offensive evolutions by the Kitty Hawk Air Group over southern Iraq,” he hesitated, took a breath, “which become necessary, against Soviet land and air forces or British, Australian and New Zealand naval, air and ground forces operating in that theatre.”
Bringle was too stunned to respond for some moments.
Stunned as in if his chin had just been on the wrong end of a Rocky Marciano right cross…
It did not sink in for some seconds.
“You’re really serious about this, aren’t you...”
McDonald nodded grimly.
“Yes,” he sighed.
Bringle felt physically sick.
He swallowed hard.
“I’m sorry. I need to get this straight, sir,” he muttered, almost choking on his disbelief. “If it comes to it you’re asking me to attack men I fought with in the Second War, men who fought side by side with us in Korea and only a couple of months ago in the Mediterranean,” he hesitated, “without warning?”
The Chief of Naval Operations had wrapped it up in a parcel of jargon and staff college war gaming ‘speak’ but nothing really masked the outrageousness of what he had just described.
Both men understood that regardless of how outgunned the British and their allies were in the Persian Gulf - in theory one or two Bringle’s missile cruisers could wipe out the whole ABNZ (Australian, British and New Zealand) Persian Gulf Squadron without ever letting it come within range of its biggest guns - in practice any kind of stand up fight was likely to be an extremely bloody affair. As if that was not bad enough, and it was, the idea of cold-bloodedly stabbing old friends in the back was...unspeakable.
“It might not come to that, Bill,” McDonald remarked dully.
The CNO had had days, possibly weeks to get his head around the abomination they were discussing; it was all horribly, disgracefully new to Bill Bringle. He had always been honored, occasionally tearfully proud to wear the uniform of the United States Navy but right now he was starting to feel dirty and there was a part of him that was tempted to ask if even the President had the right to make him feel that way about his uniform.
“Hang on,” he pleaded. This was what drowning probably felt like. “Suddenly, we trust the Russians?”
“Yes,” the Chief of Naval Operations retorted tersely.
Nobody liked feeling dirty; McDonald had had longer to get used to the idea than the commander of Carrier Division Seven.
“We don’t want another nuclear exchange. Things could easily go to Hell again. There’s a big picture that needs to be seen here, Bill. How do we keep the Red Army’s hands off the Arabian oil fields without starting another nuclear war? How many more Chicagos and Buffalos and Seattles are we willing to trade for our clear consciences? What’s more important; our personal moral scruples or the survival of our country? That’s what this is about.” He turned, looked the other man in the eye. “I don’t like this any more than you do. I’ve told you the way it is. What I need to know before I fly back to Philadelphia is if I can rely on you if this thing goes badly? Will you do what has to be done if it comes to it?”
For the first time in his twenty-seven year career in the Navy Bringle paused, half-hoping this was a bad dream.
“How will the options open to me be framed in my orders, sir?”
“Explicitly,” McDonald promised. “You know what is at stake; you will be authorized to take whatever action you see fit to discharge your duty. The orders I brought with me bear my signature and are countersigned by the President.”
Bringle did not believe he said what he said next.
Afterwards he did not believe he had said what he had just said and he certainly did not recognize the stranger’s voice he heard saying it.
In fact he felt numb to his bones.
“I’m sorry but I need to read those orders before I give you my answer, sir.”
McDonald nodded, reached inside his jacket and pulled out a sealed envelope with the Secretary of the Navy’s seal of office stamped across its top right hand corner.
“Take your time, Bill.”
Bringle was permitted to inform his flag captain and three other named ship commanders the contents of his orders. He was not given leave to discuss the same with anybody.
Once he took Carrier Division Seven into the Persian Gulf he was God.
It was terrifying...
“You will want me to sign and date your copy of this document, sir?” Bringle muttered, dazedly. No man achieved flag command without understanding how the machine of state worked.
McDonald nodded.
When the pens were put away the two men stood, the one surveying the other.
“This is the saddest day of my life, Bill,” the senior man said.
Duty is as heavy as mountain; death as light as a feather...
“Nobody will ever forgive us for this,” Bringle concurred.
They lived in a World in which honor and decency were dead letters; dirty words scorned on the lips of good men.
How in God’s name did we, as Americans, ever come to...this?
Chapter 26
Wednesday 17th June 1964
Sun Prairie, Wisconsin
Major Norman Schwarzkopf viewed the bloody, mangled bodies heaped and strewn randomly across the
fields south of the small town through his field glasses as the dawn illuminated the dreadful scene. In the last two attacks the rebels had driven women and children, old folk ahead of them. Yesterday morning he had tried to allow some of the terrified civilians, all starving and dressed in rags, into his lines before engaging the enemy; but there had been suicide bombers and berserkers mixed in with the crowd. Once inside his positions the maniacs had pulled the pins of grenades strapped to their belts, or pulled out hand guns and knives; it had been a nightmare and but for a withering artillery barrage from within the Madison perimeter Company ‘A’ would surely have been over run.
After that none of his men had balked at indiscriminately shooting into the oncoming horde. This was not war; this was something filthy, evil and the US Army was on the losing end of it.
Schwarzkopf checked his watch.
There were still a few minutes to go.
The rebels had washed against the eastern defenses of Madison – tides of humanity broken on the killing grounds before them – as if casualties, death, and maiming were of no consequence. Belatedly, somebody on the rebel side had worked out that he was beating his head against a brick wall so long as every assault was being cut to shreds by enfilade fire from the ruins of Sun Prairie.
Company ‘A’ and the dwindling number of surviving citizen volunteers, commanding the north eastern approaches to the State Capital; had repeatedly poured devastating fire into the flank of every insane frontal assault on the Divisional perimeter to the south west.
Last night the rebels had withdrawn out of range of machine gun, small arms and mortar fire from within the Madison lines. The enemy had clumsily probed down Route 151 into Sun Prairie; and noisily moved around to the north – presumably seeking an open flank - in strength before running into Schwarzkopf’s previously under-employed pickets. The constant chatter of automatic rifle fire, the unmistakably chain saw rattle of M2 50-caliber machine guns and the occasional detonation of a booby trap or grenade told Schwarzkopf it was time to go.