by Ian Slater
“This is the world.”
“I don’t like it. Not this part anyhow.”
“Who does?” asked Sandy.
“Freeman, for one. He’s busting to go.”
“You really think Washington’ll cancel it?”
“I don’t know,” said one of the others. “We’re just the gofers around here.”
* * *
In Schönbühel, Austria, the Danube, rarely blue, more often green with pollution, was winding its way slowly along its two-thousand-mile course through some of the most beautiful country in Europe, by castles and patchwork fields, on through Vienna to Bratislava in Czechoslovakia, beneath the ultramodern span of the bridge of the Slovak national uprising, past the great spires of Buda and Pest, over the great Hungarian plain, down through Yugoslavia to Belgrade, and on through Bulgaria to the river’s great delta in the Black Sea.
If you had to bail out, the NATO pilots said it was best along the Danube — but not on Ulm’s spire. Hundreds of pilots did bail out in the first few weeks, a third of them falling into enemy hands, but the rest, except for a dozen or so who met with misadventure, hung up in the woods or drowned before they could break free or reach shore, found their way back to their units within three or four days along the verdant plain. It wasn’t simply a matter of friendly populations, not yet overrun by the S-WP juggernaut, helping so many fliers, but the superb “rescue “ facilities of the NATO units, who, even under the severest weather conditions sweeping down from the Carpathians and the Bavarian Alps, would do everything possible to pick up a downed flier.
For the civilians in southern Germany, caught between the two sides, it was a dangerous business, for the advance units of the Soviet-Warsaw Pact attack were almost exclusively Russian, the latter holding the Czech brigade only as support, their fighting ability held in contempt by the Soviets. This meant that if a NATO flier was caught by the enemy, it would most likely be a Russian unit, which had a clear and brutal rule: anyone having helped the flier was executed along with his or her entire family, and the nearest village razed to the ground, the girls and women delivered to the Soviet troops. Despite this terror, NATO fliers still came back, aided by civilians who understood that if the cost to the Russians of advancing every mile in Germany was not maintained, the great “rollover” convoys now en route from New York, Boston, and Halifax — trying to learn from the experience of Convoy R-1—might well arrive to find nothing to reinforce.
CHAPTER FIFTY-SIX
Of all the surface ships operating in the North Atlantic, the minesweeper was now king.
Due to the experience of Convoy R-1, wood- and fiberglass-hulled vessels suddenly emerged from dull, mundane, and in many cases outright pitied, existence in the backwaters of the navy into the exalted ranks of leaders in the age of nuclear-powered missile ships. The admiral in command of the hitherto ugly duckling minesweeper fleet of forty ships that were to accompany the first three convoys was told not to gloat but merely to do the job and to do it quickly. The minesweepers did the job as quickly as conditions in the Atlantic allowed, approaching it with the zeal of newfound importance. They also gloated. Oh, how they gloated, flagging, as it was a court-martial offense to break radio silence, the warships behind them with messages such as “Follow the leader — Compliments of MS-190,” or “We’ll tell you when it’s safe.” It became an unofficial competition between British and American sweepers as to who could be the most insolent and get away with it.
“The HMAS Gordon will be happy to show you the way.”
“By God!” fumed a Royal Navy destroyer captain. “They’re cheeky bastards.”
To make it worse, the Canadian and U.S. minesweepers were among those combat ‘support ships’ allowed to have women aboard. One of the American ships, USS Twin Forks, was skippered by a woman, and on the third day out for one of the massive four-hundred ship-convoys on “rollover” to Europe, a pair of women’s lacy briefs was hoisted to the masthead, “Compliments of ‘rollover’ leader.” This moved a U.S. admiral to issue a firm rebuke by semaphore to the minesweeper, but as the message came through, the panties were gone, the minesweeper’s captain nonplussed and assured by the crew that the lookouts on the other ship must have been seeing things. It was a brief, light relief in what was otherwise a grim business.
Four hundred and seventy miles north of Newfoundland, another convoy was attacked by ten Soviet Hunter/Killer subs. All but two of the nuclear subs were destroyed, but not before there had been a “run-under” torpedo assault by all ten subs, resulting in thirty-seven Allied ships, twenty-eight of these merchantmen, sunk. When the convoy had re-formed in a defensive diamond east of the sub, it found itself unwittingly driven, or “bloody well herded,” as one British frigate captain put it, into a minefield laid about them by six Backfire bombers. Three of the Backfires were shot down on their way into “egg laying,” but their deadly cargoes landed intact.
Here, once again, the Russian numbers pointed to only one conclusion — that if the Allies could not reduce the rate of loss, whatever supplies and men did arrive in Europe would be insufficient to replace the men and materiel already lost, let alone to reinforce NATO. In this case the unrelenting Soviet-Warsaw Pact land offense would decide the issue. A further complication for NATO was the fact that with so many towns and cities in the Russians’ path, the S-WP attacks sent millions of civilians fleeing westward, tying up the vitally needed West European road and rail systems.
* * *
By now the USS SN/BN Roosevelt was going up for its second attempt at receiving a VLF burst message. This time additional aerial was extruded from the stern, like some great worm from the belly of a whale.
“Start the count!” ordered Robert Brentwood.
“Counting… five minutes…”
At the three-minute mark Brentwood knew he was not going to get a message. “Okay,” he said evenly at the five-minute mark. “Reel her in.”
“Reeling in, sir.”
“Very well. Mr. Zeldman, resume zigzag pattern for Holy Loch. ETA?”
The first officer glanced at the computer as Brentwood on the periscope island ordered, “Up search scope.”
“Up search.”
There was a quiet hum as the oil-mirrored scope slid up inside the master sheath housing several other periscopes as well.
“ETA Holy Loch,” Zeldman reported, “six hours approximate.”
“Exactly, Ex.”
“Six hours, three minutes, forty seconds, sir.”
“Very well.”
Brentwood knew that if the Wisconsin aerial “farm” was out and TACAMO aircraft had failed to overlap sufficiently to contact the Roosevelt, then the United States would have notified U.K. control to beam out a VLF signal. If not, it meant the Soviets were jamming satellite bounce-off signals between the States and Britain, or the British aerials at Holy Loch were knocked out, or Holy Loch itself was in the hands of the Soviets. Brentwood knew he had only three choices: stay where he was; head for Holy Loch and risk a trap of acoustic/pressure mines at the entrance — some keyed to Roosevelt’s specific signature; or run for cover and head back to the United States.
He reversed his cap, eye glued to the scope. He flicked on the control room monitor relay so the men on watch could see the same infrared images he saw. Nothing but gray waves stacked all about them, creased with white lines of bioluminescence.
“MOSS in tubes one and two.”
“MOSS in tubes one and two, sir.”
“Very well. ETA Holy Loch?”
“ETA five hours, fifty-seven minutes.”
“Speed?”
“Thirty knots.”
“Increase to forty-five.”
“Increasing to forty-five.”
One of the planesmen glanced over from his steering column at the operator on trim, rolling his eyes heavenward. “Watch the dials, sailor,” said Zeldman sharply.
“Yes, sir.”
“Revised ETA Holy Loch?” asked Robert Brentwood.
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br /> “Four hours,” answered Zeldman. “Including corrections for currents plus or minus fifteen minutes.”
“Very well. No active sonar. Passive only.”
“Passive only.”
“Call me when we’re ten miles off.”
“Yes, sir.”
As Brentwood left the redded-out control center, Zeldman heard one of the sailors whisper to another. “What’s Bing up to?”
Zeldman let it go as if the scratchy noise of the ocean had drowned out the whisper.
“Don’t know,” answered another of the men on watch. “Probably wants to get his book.”
Zeldman still held off saying anything. Now and then you had to let the rein loose a tad — up too tight, they were as apt to make a mistake as they were when too relaxed.
CHAPTER FIFTY-SEVEN
The midnight moon was bright, and a mile or so beyond the Bahama Queen, one of the bergs, a silver tower in the moon glow, split, its cracking sending hundreds of birds rising above it in panic like falling confetti, the wave running toward the hospital ship as the main berg and its calf righted themselves. For a moment, broadside to the moon, they looked dazzling white on the gunmetal sea.
* * *
“When will I know?” William Spence had asked her, and she had to wait until he had finished coughing before she replied, asking, “Know about what?” She knew what he meant but didn’t want him to worry unnecessarily.
“The X rays.”
“Oh — tomorrow morning, I guess.”
“I’m coming apart,” he said, the violent coughing starting up again, so that she got up and slipped the elastic about his head, placing the plastic mask over his nose and mouth, altering the rate of oxygen flow until the small, black plastic marble was unseated, jumping up and down inside the flow indicator.
Spence was perspiring so much, the sheet was clammy about his chest, and Lana could tell the other pain, from the amputations, was also tormenting him, the medication wearing off again, the pain boring into him again. But she knew she couldn’t give him any more morphine for half an hour. If it were up to her, she would have given it to him now — it wasn’t going to make much difference. The lungs in the X rays had been a diaphanous white. He was so weak that his so-called “walk” to the washroom had degenerated during the last twelve hours to nothing more than a shuffle. They had performed a miracle of modern surgery in keeping him alive after the trauma of the evacuation from the Peregrine, but now the killer of more shipwrecked sailors than torpedoes or shells, oil, had lain in wait in the lungs, threatening to drown him slowly. With only a cough to announce it, the lipid pneumonia had come upon him swiftly, the final quietude of pneumonic death in any hospital called “the old person’s friend.”
While holding his cough-wracked body, Lana recalled the X-ray technician as he had stood looking gloomily at the film, watching it rock to and fro with the action of the ship, the very motion somehow an obscene mockery of real life.
“There will,” Matron had told her matter-of-factly, “be moments of serenity, even reverie. In the end they’re quite content.”
“With a double amputation?” Lana had asked tartly.
“You’d be surprised, my dear,” Matron had replied.
No, thought Lana, you’ll be surprised. This boy is going to fight with everything he’s got.
“The X ray doesn’t tell us the whole story, nurse,” the MO had advised her in a more understanding tone. “Even so, I’m surprised the prednisone didn’t help — I’d thought there was definitely an allergic component that the prednisone would deal with. Well, all we can do now is watch him. Could be a turnaround before we reach Halifax.”
* * *
She had been with him eight hours straight, and now in the calm following the wracking coughs, every one of which she had felt like a blow to her own body, Lana leaned over him and with a cool, white facecloth, as white as the ice, he thought, she dabbed his body cool, gently patting him dry. She saw him smile, or rather his eyes moving suddenly, full of life, the rest of his face covered by the semitransparent green mask. “What are you grinning about, Mr. Spence?” she asked with playful severity.
“I can’t help it,” he said, his voice sounding nasal from behind the mask. “I don’t need this mask anymore.”
“You sure?”
“Yes.” Closing his eyes, he lifted his left arm and lowered it gently onto her hand. She did not take it away but reached up with her left hand to turn off the oxygen flow, its soft hiss fading, the sound of the waves from the calved berg still slapping the ship’s flanks. She was standing by him, her right hand still beneath his bandaged arm. He looked up at her and wordlessly she sat down by him, her hand still beneath his arm, her other hand gently stroking him and seeing the miracle of the pain not gone but momentarily defeated by her gift of touch. She raised her left hand higher, kissed her finger, and gently stroked him again. He groaned in ecstasy, his head beginning to move slowly, joyously, from side to side, and in that moment, out of all the pain and the evil of Jay La Roche, Lana emerged as gentle as a virgin, but knowing much more, lowering her head, her long, soft hair falling on him, then she kissed him there, the firm but pliant wetness of her lips encasing him, drawing him into her, her tongue sliding hard and fast and then slowly, lovingly, as he groaned, his whole body beginning to arch and rock, arching again, then arched as if frozen in time, shuddering before he collapsed against the bed, bathed in sweat, his eyes glistening with life, looking at her, then slowly filling with such calm that they said nothing until the pain, like a vindictive husband wanting to kill, attacked again.
Quickly, alarmed, she looked at the clock, rearranging her clothes and hair. It was still ten minutes to go before the next injection. Now the flush of love in his face left him, like a red curtain torn aside, his face stunned with ferocious pain, white, as pale as moonlight. She took the hypodermic, injected him, and knelt by him, ready with the mask should the coughing return. It never did, and as she told him she loved him, he went into a deep sleep, a tiny spot of blood seeping through on the stump of his right hand, as scarlet against the bandages, she thought, as a rose against hard snow.
She pressed the buzzer and the cardiac arrest team arrived. He revived on the second “jump,” but later that night the oscilloscope’s hiccuping green sine wave went flat, and in place of the lively “bips,” there was a long, steady tone.
* * *
“In all my career,” Matron fumed before the chief surgeon and the ship’s chief medical officer, “I have never seen such a flagrant violation of procedure.”
The MO, the young captain who had referred to Spence as Lana’s “boyfriend” a couple of days ago, could see the pain in Lana’s face, and for his part, the morphine shot she’d given the patient too early would hardly have made any difference. He told the chief surgeon so. And in his view it certainly didn’t warrant a court-martial, as Matron was pressing for.
The matron’s head shot up, looking over at the surgeon.
“It’s hardly the morphine I ‘m concerned about, Mr. Reilly.” Even now she insisted on the British convention of referring to chief surgeons as “Mister,” its usage conveying a higher status than “Doctor.”’ “Though giving the patient the injection earlier is, in my professional opinion, also thoroughly reprehensible.”
“Then what is this all about?” asked the surgeon, nonplussed.
“Ah — perhaps,” the MO interjected, “Ms. La Roche would care to step out for—”
“No,” said Lana.
“All right, then, Matron, I think you’d better go ahead,” said the MO.
“The sheet, sir… it’s… it’s filthy.”
“Filthy sheets?” said the surgeon, pushing the question back at her and looking at the MO for clarification.
“She …” began Matron archly, “did things to him.”
“Oh—” said the surgeon. “Oh—” He paused. They could hear the ship’s foghorn as it entered the area off Cape Race. “This is a very
severe charge, Matron. I would advise you—”
“I don’t deny it,” said Lana.
Matron glanced quickly at the surgeon, making it quite plain she expected the maximum punishment for such unprofessional conduct and would not rest until she got it.
“Ms. La Roche,” the chief surgeon began, “you must realize how serious this is.”
“Yes, sir.”
Now there was a silence in which the captain noticed for the first time that he could hear the clock in the cabin ticking very distinctly. He shifted a few pens on his desk pad. “I’m afraid I’ll have to refer this to HQ. Are there any — mitigating circumstances you’d like to add—”
“The boy was dying,” said Lana.
There was silence again, Matron staring at her. Finally the surgeon, doodling uncomfortably on the blotter, said, “That doesn’t excuse it.”
“Exactly!” said the matron.
“All right,” said the surgeon. “That’s all.”
* * *
Out on the deck, where the chilly fog now came tumbling through in gusts, Matron paused before taking the steps down to her cabin deck. “If you think I’ve done it because I don’t like you, that’s not true.”
“Oh really?” said Lana.
“The point is, my girl, that we have to set an example for the others who come after us.”
“Yes,” said Lana. “Imagine if every nurse did it, and,” she added sarcastically, “right in the middle of a war.”
“Don’t be insolent! You don’t seem to have realized something, young lady.”
“And what’s that?”
The matron stood very close to her, and Lana could smell her bad breath as she began to speak. “You might have killed him. A shock to the heart like that.”
“He was dying.”
“You don’t know that.”
“Didn’t you see the X rays, Matron?”
“I’ve seen more X rays and more deaths than you, young lady. He might well have recovered—If he had been left alone.”