by Peter Albano
“No good,” Bell answered. “Too much volcanic activity. The sensors can’t tell the difference. And, anyway, Washington needs all the satellite time available for all those other crises.” He waved a hand.
“The whole goddamned world is in ferment,” Avery muttered. “Washington can’t keep on top of all of it. So we’re suckin’ on the hind tit, gentlemen.”
“And our ‘hind tit’ is marked ‘pirates,’” Brent said, suddenly coming to life.
Avery’s eyes flashed. “You have something better, Ensign? Zeros, Ensign?”
Brent felt the hostility, but was determined to meet it head on. “Yes, Zeros. Are pirates and madmen better, Captain?”
Mason grunted. Shrugged. Turned his palms up in resignation.
“Go ahead, Brent,” Bell said, sagging in his chair, limp hands on his desk. He had the look of a man forced to listen to a fairy tale.
Dennis Banks leaned forward, looking at Brent expectantly. Brent spoke. “All of you know the Zero had an extraordinary range — over one thousand miles.” He moved to the chart, measured a gap on a pair of dividers. “Five hundred miles,” he said, waving the dividers. He moved one end of the instrument along the south coast of the Chukchi Peninsula, swinging arcs. “As you can see, the scene of the sinking is in easy range of the Chukchi Peninsula.”
“But how in the world could the Japs ever establish a base there? My God, man — the logistics,” Avery said.
Silence as Brent replaced the dividers, returned to his seat, and opened his brief case. He scanned some documents. “I have been in contact with the Operational Archives Branch, Naval Historical Center in Washington.” He glanced at a computer printout. “Of the 109 Japanese submarines lost in World War II, nine just vanished without a trace — still unaccounted for. Of the nine, one Type I Twelve could carry one aircraft and a single Type ST Zero could carry three aircraft.”
“Three aircraft?” Banks said.
“Oh, yes, Dennis. They had seven different models with aircraft-carrying capabilities.” He thumbed through his documents, removed one, squinted. “Thirty-eight I Boats were capable of carrying a single aircraft. But the Type ST Zero was the most interesting.”
“Ah,” Avery said. “The Panama Canal boat.” “Right, Captain,” Brent said, warming. “Panama Canal?” Banks said, quizzically. “Yes. You see the Japanese planned to destroy the Panama Canal. So they built the three largest submarines ever built, up to that time.”
“The ST Zero,” Banks said.
Brent nodded. “It was an incredible boat — large by today’s standards.” He raised a document. Read. “Displacement, 6,560 tons; length, 400 feet; two shaft diesels and four electric motors generating 7,700 horsepower and 2,400 horsepower; speed eighteen knots on the surface, six-and-one-half submerged; range 37,500 miles; one five-point-five-inch gun, ten twenty-five millimeter; eight twenty-one-inch tubes; twenty torpedoes; and … He looked up, dropping the document. “Three seaplanes.”
“But they never attacked Panama,” Banks said. “Why?”
“Unknown,” Brent said. “But the important thing was the existence of these boats.”
“Brent,” Craig Bell said slowly, “are you implying that a pig boat has been hiding up there — ” he gestured at the chart — “up there, somewhere in the Bering Sea area all these years? That’s hard to buy — like science fiction.”
“I know, sir. But isn’t this theory as viable as pirates? Lunatics?”
“Where have they been all these years?” Avery said suddenly.
“Frozen in, Captain. A secret base.” Brent rose, returned to the chart, traced a finger along the Kamchatka Peninsula. “A hundred secret bases anywhere along these coasts could still be undiscovered. We admit that when we assume pirates.”
“But fuel, Brent,” the commander said. “Food?”
“Oil,” Ross said, returning to his chair. “It seeps up in some coves on this side and, I understand, on the Siberian side as well. Why, not Commander? Frozen in during World War II. They lived off fish, seals, walrus, sea lions, seaweed. The Japanese are seafood eaters. They eat no beef. And they’re disciplined.” His eyes swept the room. “They could do it.”
“And they attack in 1983,” Avery said, grinning incredulously.
“Yes. I believe they were trapped by ice. The carbon dioxide content of the atmosphere has gone up. The Earth is warming. They finally broke loose.”
Captain Avery touched a clenched fist to his forehead and then looked up slowly. “You actually believe that — that fantasy.” The voice was filled with disbelief.
“Yes,” Brent said firmly. “Given the ammunition used against Sparta and the Mayday, yes.” He went on, very slowly, “Something of that nature. Some kind of relic from World War II.”
Disbelief became irritation. “I don’t understand how a grown man can dream up such incredible tales.” Brent came erect, lips thin as the captain continued. “Of course there are holdouts all over Sopac and Cenpac. The Pacific Ocean is 9,600 miles long and 11,500 miles wide and has ten thousand islands. But Jesus, boy, you’re talking about the Bering Sea — Arctic weather — a submarine.” His fist struck an open palm. “Come on, Ensign. This isn’t Fantasy Island. Grow up.”
“Sir, I’ll accept your rejection,” Brent told him, anger bringing sharpness to his voice. “But never ridicule.”
“Why, you young pup … ”
“Gentlemen, please,” Bell said, rising. “Can’t we — ” He was interrupted by the phone. While he talked, Brent glared, Mason chewed a lip, and Dennis stared at the chart. “Ah, some good news, for a change,” Craig said, replacing the phone.
“What?” Mason grunted, glaring at Brent.
“One of the Coast Guardsmen has been found.”
“Coast Guardsmen?” Avery said.
“Yes,” Bell answered, smiling, obviously happy for the interruption and change in subject. “Tyronne Jones, the co-pilot of the HH Fifty-Two that disappeared on two December off Attu.”
“After all this time,” Brent said, anger subdued by curiosity.
“Yes. The Aleut fishermen he was attempting to rescue picked him up and it took them two days to get word to the radio station on Attu. But he’s in bad shape. Even with his thermal flight flotation suit, he suffered from exposure on top of massive injuries. He’s in a coma.”
Brent leaned forward with new eagerness. “Where is he?”
“Right here in Seattle. They just flew him in. He’s in the Naval Hospital.”
“I would like your permission to visit the hospital and see Tyronne Jones. I’d like to be there if and when he comes to,” Brent said.
“Maybe he saw your Zeros — is that it?” Avery said, smirking.
Brent stared at the old captain. “He could be a link. Maybe he saw something. What else do we have, Captain?” he asked coldly.
The captain turned his palms up. Tossed his head. Bell nodded, happy that the conversation had cooled. “After 1500 hours, Brent. The Russians have another AGI and some whalers northwest of the Hawaiian Islands. The CIA claims the intelligence ship is the Petrova of the Balzam class. I want a report on her new monitoring equipment and I’d like a projection on operational procedures. She’s probably sniffing for a scent of the New Jersey.” Bell thumped his desk. “And get me everything we have on their whalers — factory ships and catchers. There’s a flotilla in the north Pacific.’’
“Aye, aye, sir,’’ Brent said, rising. Then, turning to Dennis Banks, “Care to come along — show you my office, if you have time.”
Banks came to his feet, smiling. “With your permission, sir,” he said, following protocol, addressing the captain.
Avery nodded to Bell who, taking the cue, said, “Very well, gentlemen. You are dismissed.” The two officers saluted and left.
Walking side by side, the two ensigns crossed the anteroom, stopping at the scuttlebutt. Filling a cup and handing it to Brent, Banks said, “I really don’t have much time. I’m due at the Naval Air Stat
ion by 1800 hours to catch my flight to Pearl. But I wanted to talk to you for a moment.” He filled his own cup.
“My office is down the hall,” Brent said. Both men gulped down their water and threw their cups into a receptacle.
*
“It’s not much,” Brent said, settling himself behind his desk — a gray, steel desk that seemed huge in the tiny room just large enough to accommodate it, two chairs, and four file cabinets. “But I call it home, Dennis.”
“Have you ever seen junior officer quarters on an LHA?”
“No,” Brent laughed. “But I’ve been on a LPH. So I can imagine.”
“This is a ballroom, Brent. Believe me.” And then, seriously, “Brent, about the Sparta and Zeros.” Ross was suddenly alert, tense. “I listened to you — you make sense.”
Brent sighed. “The sub.”
“Not necessarily. But the holdouts — conceivable. Even Avery admits there are still a lot of them. And maybe a sub.” He shrugged. “There was a lot of Japanese activity in the Aleutians during World War II.”
“They took Kiska and Attu.”
“Right, Brent. The chain is over one thousand miles long. Hundreds of islands — most of them uninhabited. There could be a forgotten base.”
“But you don’t believe it’s an airbase, Dennis.”
“Who knows? Strips can be camouflaged. But I was thinking in terms of a ship — ah, maybe a fast gunboat that hit Sparta and ran south.”
“Then those Russian LRAs hunting the downed aircraft should pick her up.”
“Not necessarily, Brent. I’ve been on two search operations. They’d be searching at low altitudes, limiting their radar scans. She could be over a thousand miles south of the Aleutians, well out of their search parameters.” The young flyer drummed his chin with a single finger. “Keep in mind, they’ll be squaring out from the last known position of their lost aircraft.”
Brent smiled. “You know, you’re beginning to sound as crazy as I do.” They both laughed. “But the damned ordnance makes this crazy, doesn’t it, Dennis?”
The flyer nodded. “Right. Rational explanations don’t work when you’re challenged by an irrational problem.” He opened and closed a fist. Studied it. “Brent, I have a gut feeling about this — hard to explain. Something murderous, merciless is loose up there. Maybe a ship and maybe not.” He clenched both fists and pressed them together, rubbing knuckles on knuckles. “There might be a pattern. First, Sparta, then the Coast Guard helicopter, and then the Russian. Something frightful moving south.” The fists opened, clutched the armrests. He leaned forward. “If only the Russians weren’t so goddamned secretive.”
Silence. And then Brent said pensively, “I wonder why Bell and Avery can’t buy our ideas?”
“They’re older — conservative.”
Brent nodded. “Not just older and conservative, Dennis. They’re afraid to make a mistake, afraid they’ll look foolish.” He smiled. “The way we do.”
“That comes with rank,” Banks said, chuckling. Then he rose, extending a hand. “Got to be going, Brent.”
“I hope you’re assigned here when you transfer to NIS.”
“I certainly hope so. And Brent, did you ever take modern math?”
“Modern math?”
“Yes. Don’t forget, ‘zero’ doesn’t necessarily mean ‘nothing.’”
They both laughed.
*
Brent Ross had despised hospitals since his mother’s death. Entering Seattle’s Naval Hospital, he passed the usual profusion of carefully tended plants clustered about the entrance, then more plants in the foyer all promoting life in a place of death. He paused, eyes searching for and finding the information counter. Then he strode toward it briskly, shoes squeaking on highly polished linoleum. Glancing about, he found the usual plump sofas where the usual silent, anxious people sat awaiting word from the horrors of the operating rooms.
And the smell was here, even in the waiting room, antiseptics and cleaning solvents. Two nurses passed, all white, dehumanized. Then a doctor, wearing his white smock and stethoscope like badges of rank. And the man’s face, the standard professional mask screwed on by the medical school. They all looked the same, exuding calm assurance although Brent was convinced doctors were only slightly less confused than their patients and just as frightened.
Uneasily, Brent leaned on a long information counter, staring into the wide blue eyes of an exquisite teenage girl, wearing the usual peppermint stripes of a volunteer and incongruously brimming with life. “Ensign Tyronne Jones,” he asked.
The girl smiled, punched the keys of a console, glanced at a screen, noting, “He’s in the ICU — ah, I’m sorry, Intensive Care Unit — fourth floor.”
Walking to the elevator, Brent passed doors marked “Laboratory,” “Nuclear Medicine,” “EKG” and “Chapel.” He turned his head as he passed the chapel, noting a short phrase etched on a bronze plate, “Find comfort, all you who enter here.”
Brent snorted, entered the gurney-sized elevator and pushed a button. He was the only passenger. As the elevator rose, he thought suddenly of Pamela Ward. Wished she were with him. But she was at the office, attacking Fox Blue Able. He sighed. At least he would see her that evening. He disliked being away from her. The door opened. He stepped out and walked to the nurses’ station, a long, brightly lighted, waist-high counter. “Ensign Brent Ross to see Ensign Tyronne Jones,” he said, leaning on the counter top.
A seated, obese, middle aged nurse with a great, round face of pudding paler than vanilla and wearing the tag, “Ms. Janice Smathers, RN,” over a great sagging breast, looked up from a clipboard. A box of chocolates was at her right hand. Two other nurses, one standing at a cart sorting medications and the other at a desk writing in a journal, stopped their activities and turned to stare at the ensign.
“Ensign Jones is in ICU. He’s hallucinating,” Ms. Smathers said icily, pendulous chins quivering. “There’s already a Coast Guard officer with him. We can’t have the whole Navy and Coast Guard steaming through ICU.” Brent heard tittering.
Controlling his temper with an effort, Brent said, “I’m with Naval Intelligence. This is not a social call.”
The nurse nodded, reached into the box, stuffed a cream into her mouth. “You may see him, if you like,” she said through chocolate-streaked teeth, pointing down the hall. “Four-four-eight. But he doesn’t make sense.”
“I’ll decide on what makes sense,” Brent said, turning on his heel. He walked to four-four-eight, feeling his back crawl as if hungry eyes were undressing him.
Entering the room, Brent’s view was blocked by the hulk of a man almost as large as he, wearing the uniform of a Coast Guard lieutenant. The man turned. “I’m Brent Ross,” the ensign said, extending his hand. “Naval Intelligence.”
“Douglas Cameron, exec on the Morganthau,” the lieutenant said. Then he said, grimly, “Glad you’re here, Ensign. There’s something phony about this.” He gestured to the bed.
Staring at the young black stretched out with his head swathed in bandages, right arm in splints, Brent winced, not believing a human being could have so many tubes stuck into his body. He had one in the nose, two in the arms, another stretching from under the sheets near the patient’s abdomen, carrying yellow liquid to a plastic container. Three electrodes were attached to his chest with wires terminating at a wall-hung oscilloscope where a glowing, jagged line crawled across its face. “God, he’s wired,” Brent muttered.
Cameron nodded. “May not make it.” He punched an open palm with a fist. “Damn! He’s a good man.”
“He’s never come to?” Brent asked.
“No! But once in a while he calls to Solly.”
“Solly?”
“His pilot, Solomon Levine. Ty was the co-pilot.”
Brent nodded, staring at the blank face of the injured man, eyes slitted, mouth slack, breath labored. “Some strange things have happened up there.”
“You mean the Sparta, Ensign?”
“Yes.”
“I’ve heard.”
“What about his patrol?” Brent nodded toward Jones. “Anything unusual?”
The lieutenant shook his head. “No. They were on a rescue mission west of Attu. Sent us position reports regularly.” The lieutenant shifted his weight. “But something is, ah, unnatural about this.”
“I don’t understand.”
“It’s Ty. He yells some strange things — things about an island.”
“An island?”
“Yes.”
“Solly,” came a cry from the tubes. The officers hunched over the bed. “A fuckin’ island.”
“Attu,” Cameron said.
“Maybe,” Brent said. But he wouldn’t be surprised.
“Flowers, flowers, Solly,” Jones shouted, with surprising strength. “Huge flowers. Pull up! Pull up!” The black raised his head from the pillow, eyes wide, filled with horror. Brent leaned close. The head dropped back. Tears streamed. “Oh, Solly. Solly. Oh, God. Solly.”
Ms. Smathers waddled in, skirt straining against enormous thighs. “Enough, gentlemen. What you heard is what he says — over and over again.”
“Nothing else?” Brent asked.
“Sometimes he mentions someone named Davies.”
“The third member of the crew,” the Coast Guardsman said.
“But nothing else?”
“No!” the nurse said, running black, rodent eyes over the ensign.
Brent reached into a pocket, handed the nurse a card. “Please call me if he comes to.”
“I might call you anyway,” she said, planting a hand on a gigantic hip and smiling through layers of chins.
Brent felt his stomach turn, heard Cameron chuckle. The ensign turned wordlessly and left.
*
“Scotch and soda, please, Pam.” He sank into the sofa.
“Off mai tais, Brent?” she said, walking to the bar from her bedroom where she had hurriedly changed from her uniform into a simple green, cotton frock — a loose fitting dress that was unable to conceal the sinuous flow of her body.
“Scotch, this time, thanks,” he said, staring as she bent to grasp a bottle of Chivas Regal, buttocks momentarily outlined by straining cotton. He shook his head. “Any luck with Fox Blue Able?”