WW III wi-1

by Ian Slater

  “I don’t think so,” replied Lana, but Matron thought she saw a glimpse of fear in the young woman’s eyes and she pressed home her advantage.

  “You’ll never know, will you?”

  The temptation of guilt, of a hundred letters to Ann Landers about unprofessional conduct of nurses, flashed through Lana’s mind, doubt flickering in her eyes for a moment, and then it was all gone, rejected utterly, as if her whole being had irrevocably changed at that precise moment in her life. “I gave the boy love.”

  “Is that what you call it?” sneered Matron.

  “Yes,” said Lana, “and I’m sorry for you.”

  “You! Sorry for me!”

  “Yes,” Lana said softly, pulling her cape tightly about her, the fog from the Grand Banks colder by the moment, enveloping them both and hiding the bergs. “I’m sorry for anyone,” said Lana, “who hasn’t had love. It shrivels your heart to nothing.” Lana turned and walked slowly away along the deck, past the dim outlines of the lifeboats.

  * * *

  The young medical officer managed to get Matron to strike out some of the more hostile adjectives in her report about Lana La Roche, and while, informally, he convinced the surgeon not to recommend a court-martial, he could not prevent transfer, to the Matron’s delight, to a forward hospital — in what the nurses called “America’s Siberia”: the Aleutians.

  “As godforsaken a place on this earth as you could imagine,” the medical officer informed Matron in return for her retraction of the prejudicial adjectives. “And,” he added hastily, “under strict supervision.”

  “She should be drummed out of the service,” Matron retorted. “She has no place — absolutely no place — in—”

  “Well, Matron, you won’t be bothered by her anymore.”

  The matron, however, was barely appeased. “She’s a bad penny, that one. Mark my words, Captain. She’ll turn up again.”

  The MO made no comment on her prediction but did tell Matron it was the best he could do.

  * * *

  Before she packed, the Bahama Queen passing by McNab’s Island, through the narrows, past the Imperial Oil refinery into Canadian Forces Base Halifax, Lana sat down and wrote a letter to Mr. and Mrs. Richard Spence in Oxshott, England. Trusting the highly reliable fleet mail service — much of it sent electronically from base to base — more than she trusted the civilian post, Lana addressed the letter care of her brother at Holy Loch, with a covering note to him just as she had done with the tape that William Spence had made a few days before.

  Dear Mr. and Mrs. Spence:

  My name is Lana La Roche and I was a nurse on your son’s ward aboard the hospital ship Bahama Queen. Although we’ve never met, I feel I know something about you, as William talked quite a lot about his family. I know he sent a tape, and though, of course, I don’t know what he said about his wounds and the major surgery he had — I’m guessing he didn’t say much at all about this and so I thought it might be of some help if I could tell you a little about the circumstances as I know that by now you will have received official notification from the DOD of his death and that after what appeared to be the chance of a good recovery, his passing must be a terrible shock. It was a combination of things, mostly the fact that he had contracted pneumonia from oil he had inhaled while trying to rescue shipmates trapped in the engine room of his ship, and while we were concentrating so much on the severe wounds to both arms, the wretched pneumonia, as it so often does, was already forming in his lungs. By the time it was detected, I’m afraid that plus the amputation proved too much. He was a wonderful young man and, though weakened by his ordeal, quietly brave — not only on the Peregrine but on the Bahama Queen as well, where I think he knew the end was near.

  All I can say is that he clearly loved you all very much and told me so, and that helped him a great deal. We buried him at sea yesterday, as regulations call for. It was a very simple but moving ceremony. I asked the ship’s first mate to mark the spot as near as he could on a chart of the area, a copy of which I’ve enclosed. I will keep the original for another time to send as I’m forwarding this by Fleet SAT Post — electronic mail. I don’t know if this will help any, but the first officer told me the location of the burial is remarkably exact as they take bearings from Loran and satellite.

  I’ve addressed this letter care of my brother Robert, as I did the tape I sent on for William, asking Robert to pass it on also. I hope we can meet someday. Please don’t bother to reply, but if you wish to write sometime, and I can tell you any more about William’s time on the ship, please write me care of the address in Virginia on the envelope and they’ll relay the letter to me. Sincerely yours,

  Lana La Roche

  In the covering note to Robert she told him he could read the letter, as it would fill him in on the news, “if that’s what you can call it,” and also reminded him that, as she’d mentioned in her earlier note, whenever he got back to base and received the tape and the letter she sent him, he should advance the tape for a minute or two until William started talking—”otherwise the boy’s parents might think there was something wrong with it.”

  * * *

  The censor patched out “Bahama Queen” and went over it again, making sure there was no mention of the USS Roosevelt, on which her brother Robert Brentwood served, and whited out the time and place of the burial, giving another point hundreds of miles away so as not to give away any more information about the hospital ship’s location.

  CHAPTER FIFTY-EIGHT

  Standing at the bow, his tank commander’s collar pulled up, hands gripping the rail like a Roman tribune aboard his chariot, Douglas Freeman went up to the Saipan’s starboard flying bridge as the LPH headed north in the Sea of Japan, having reduced her speed from fifteen to a mere five knots. When Al Banks found the general, he immediately told him he had good news and bad news and asked him which he wanted to hear first.

  “Both barrels,” said Freeman, adding grumpily, “They’ve turned it down.”

  “No, sir.”

  Freeman pushed himself back from the rail. “Don’t say they’ve approved?”

  “Hold on a minute, General. Good news is, the Taiwanese have told Washington they’ll back off for the moment. They’re reinforcing the offshore islands of Matsu and Quemoy. That’s provocative, but as long as they don’t start shelling the mainland or launch an amphibious assault, Washington believes China will stay out of it. They haven’t withdrawn all the way to Taiwan, but at least they’ve withdrawn to their side of the dividing line in the Taiwan Strait.”

  “All right, so China’s off our back. Quid pro quo. They won’t resupply the NKA in return for us keeping the Kuomintang on a leash. I don’t like it, but right now I don’t care what those lily-livered bastards in Foggy Bottom have arranged. What’s the bad news? Have we got the go signal or not?”

  “Monsoon, General. Moving down from the Sea of Okhotsk.”

  “It figures,” said Freeman. There was disgust in his voice, but it was a calm disgust at receiving the news of yet another delay, and the blowup that Banks had expected never materialized.

  “Now,” said the general calmly, “God’s on their side.” He turned back to face the sea. “When will it hit us?”

  “Ten hours — maybe less, the met boys say.”

  “Why?” asked the general slowly, darkly, in a tone so controlled, so ominous, that Banks would have preferred some of the general’s feigned short-fuse rhetoric. “Why is he doing this to me?” repeated the general.

  Freeman leaned against the rail, one foot up on the lower rung.

  “All right, Al,” he said wearily, without looking around at his aide. “Let me know when the monsoon’s expected to be over. ‘Course,” he sighed, “by that time Washington’ll probably have changed their minds.” Now he turned around from the rail. “The Yosu perimeter?”

  “Half what it was, General. Intelligence estimates it can hold four days at most.”

  Freeman had turned away again, looking
up this time at the starless sky. “God, I hate nights like this.” There was a long silence — uncomfortable for Banks.

  “Anything else, General?”

  “No, Al. Keep me updated on that damned monsoon.”

  “Yes, sir. Goodnight.”

  * * *

  As impatient as General Freeman was, alone on the upper deck of LPH Saipan, below in the oil-smelling belly of the LPH’s hangars, David Brentwood, one of the two thousand marines and airborne troops still waiting, put his camouflage pack against the bulkhead as a pillow, loosening his load-bearing vest and taking off the Kevlar helmet, placing his protective eyeglasses inside it, and unsnapping his belt. He was reading the note on the postcard again.

  “Hey, Stumble-ass, don’t worry about it,” said Thelman. “She’ll be there when you get back.”

  “Then,” said another marine, “keep off twenty-six. Gunner kept those cold pills. He’ll be about as fast as Tim Conway.”

  The thing David couldn’t work out was why on earth Melissa had sent a postcard of herself — one of those camera machine shots — without an envelope. It was the flirt in her, he thought— she’d know very well all the other guys would see it. And there was nothing really in the note — just a “wish you were here” scrawl, a faint tropic isle background, and Stacy, the note said, had passed his friggin’ IR major with straight A’s. Got a deferment from the national call-up because IR was “hot” right now.

  “Hey, man,” said Thelman. “ ‘Tain’t a Dear John.”

  David wasn’t so sure.

  * * *

  Across the world, an ocean and continent away, the mood in the control room of the USS Roosevelt was as tense as First Officer Peter Zeldman could remember it. What would “Bing,” Robert Brentwood, do? They were going up to a hundred feet for the third attempt to receive a burst message.

  “Five hundred — four fifty — four hundred — three fifty…”

  Robert Brentwood stood on the raised periscope island, both hands behind him on the guard rail, legs crossed, looking with quiet confidence across at the sonar, a lot of fresh sea noise coming in, but nothing that stood out in the clutter.

  “One hundred, sir.”

  “Very well. Roll out VLF aerial sixteen fifty.”

  “VLF to sixteen fifty.”

  They watched the VLF registering on the stern monitor relay screen as a white trace as the aerial, ready to receive anything on the three-to-thirty kilohertz band, extruded from Roosevelt’s stern pod, the long wire rising on buoys until it lay extended approximately eighteen to twenty feet below the surface of the sea.

  “Begin the count,” ordered Brentwood.

  “Five minutes and counting… four minutes thirty seconds…”

  At ten seconds to go, the tense mood in control and throughout the sub had changed to a palpable gloom. Brentwood and his crew knew that in five or six hours they would be no more than sixty to eighty miles out of Holy Loch and would have to go up for a burst message. If none was received then, they would have to stay out with the assumption that the war had gone nuclear and that the Roosevelt, on Brentwood’s authority alone, would launch its six eight-warhead-tipped MX missiles aft of the sail at its preselected forty-eight targets in the Soviet Union.

  “Wind her in,” said Brentwood calmly.

  “Sir,” proffered Zeldman, “should we try HF?”

  “Negative.”

  Brentwood had already figured that one out; using the high-frequency aerial would mean taking the sub up farther so it could literally poke its stick HF aerial above the surface, the chance of receiving messages being much greater but more dangerous, as one penetration of the sea-air interface by the aerial could be recognized by Soviet satellite intelligence, if not intercepted by another Soviet sub. “Sticking your head out the front door” is what the crew called it, whereas with VLF you stayed submerged, not letting the enemy know where you were — the only potential giveaway a noisy VLF reel retraction or any other noise on the sub that might be picked up by the Russian subs or by their SOSUS networks. For this reason no radios were allowed without headphone attachments, and the cook could not even chop onions during silent running.

  “Take her down to one thousand,” ordered Robert Brentwood.

  “One thousand, sir.”

  “Carry on, Ex. Resume zigzag.”

  “Resume zigzag. Yes, sir.”

  Brentwood asked the electronics officer if the failure to receive a VLF burst message could have anything to do with their own VLF aerial.

  “I’ve checked it out, sir. It’s fine.”

  Brentwood thanked him and quietly, calmly, addressed the whole watch, not using the PA system so as not to risk the slightest hull reverberation; the sound of the aerial retraction was risk enough.

  “Right, you all know the situation,” Brentwood began. “Next attempt to receive burst message verification will be our last. If we do not receive any — if it has been a case of land farm knockout — we should be close enough to the Scottish coast on the final BMV station to elicit TACAMO recognition signals. But if not, then we must assume the Soviets have taken out both Holy Loch and Wisconsin transmitters and possibly the floating dry dock in the Loch itself. If we do not receive TACAMO, we will proceed north — get as close to Kola Peninsula as we can— and unload. Any questions?”

  In the red glow, a blue denim sleeve, looking darker than it was, rose. It was one of the operators on planes control. “Turbulence during aerial layout indicates bad weather topside, Skipper. TACAMO aircraft might be grounded — or being jammed.”

  “Believe we would have picked up jamming,” said Brentwood, turning to Sonar for confirmation. “That right?”

  “Yes, sir. No jamming apparent.”

  “All right,” continued Brentwood, “we’ll be close enough in so that even a relatively weak TACAMO signal or farm transmission should reach us. We might risk a quick HF exposure. But if we do not receive any signal, then our course of action is set.”

  “Yes, sir,” said the planesman, but his face told Robert Brentwood he wasn’t happy.

  No one was.

  * * *

  The salt night wind was stiff in his face, the smell of monsoon rain approaching, a peculiarly clean smell that he’d never experienced before, as Douglas Freeman started to berate himself, talking as if he were dressing down a besieged prizefighter between rounds. “Well — you saying God’s on their side. That’s as self-pitying a piece of shit as I’ve heard in a long time, Freeman. You need a good kick in the ass.” He gripped the railing, which narrowed sharply at the bow, the sea splitting open beneath him. “God helps those,” he told himself, “who help themselves, General!”

  When he reached Banks’s cabin, his aide saw the sparkling impishness of a child in the general’s eyes. “Banks. God helps those who help themselves!”

  “Yes, sir.”

  “Al,” said the general, a mood of such excitement coming over him that the tenor of his voice grew more stentorian by the moment as he invited his aide out on the deck. The sea was becoming rougher all the time, but Freeman seemed oblivious to all around him as, leaning into the wind, he recalled what he termed “the fields of honor — Agincourt, the first English conquest of Normandy in the early fourteen hundreds, Waterloo, Gettysburg, the Somme, Normandy, Stirling’s brilliance with the long-range desert group, the eccentricity of Wingate, Patton, Heinz Guderian, Liddell Hart, Lawrence, Napoleon, Mount-batten.” He mentioned Mountbatten and Burma several times, and each war, he told Banks, was different, though the terror just the same. “Worst mistake you can make, Al,” he told Banks, “is to seduce yourself with history. Technology changes everything. Only the men are the same, and with new technology, even they change. You realize in the first two hours of the Arab-Israeli tank battles in Sinai, over ten percent were disabled. Men have never before been under such strain — not even in trench warfare. The sheer hitting power, mobility, means there’s nowhere to hide. No time for respite. You have to fight or die. Come
with me, I’ve got something to show you.”

  * * *

  Captain Al Banks listened to the general’s plan carefully before he spoke. After hearing it, he thought that either General Freeman had a screw loose or was some kind of genius.

  “You seem to know a lot about Pyongyang, General.”

  “Yes I do,” said Freeman, in no mood for false modesty. “Blindfolded, I could take you through Pyongyang.” He paused. “You think I’m nuts?”

  “General, I just hope you’re right.”

  Freeman was grimacing as a huge cloud of spray enveloped the ship. “So do I, Al. So do I.”

  CHAPTER FIFTY-NINE

  “Sonar contact!” Roosevelt’s operator said. “Good bubbles, sir,” by which he meant the cavitation of the unidentified ship’s prop was very definite on the sound graph.

  “Trawler?” suggested Brentwood as he grabbed the extra set of earphones.

  There was no reply from the operator.

  “Closing?” asked Brentwood

  “Think so, sir. Slowly. Think they might be trawlers.”

  Brentwood turned to Zeldman. One of the burst messages they had received before the “Zippos” had started was about the trawlers who’d attacked R-1. “Cut to one-third.”

  “One-third, sir.”

  Now the sonar hydrophones would have reduced interference from the Roosevelt itself.

  “Soon as you can, Sonar,” Brentwood enjoined.

  “Yes, sir.”

  Zeldman, his face in the light of the control room taking on a deep sunburned color, asked, “Herring boats?”

  “Possibly,” answered Brentwood.

  “Closing, sir,” came Sonar’s voice. “Fifteen knots.”

  “Tad high for a fish boat, isn’t it?” put in Brentwood.

  Sonar made a face that said six of one and half a dozen of the other. “ ‘Bout right if they’re hurrying to close in a net, sir.”