The islands were effectively left to the Maine lobstermen, one of the most intrepid breed of cold-water fishermen in the world. Yet there was not a single safe harbor along this coast.
It was essential to either haul the lobster boats and get them to higher ground or, more daringly, anchor them in the western lee of one of the 3,000 islands that guard the downeast coast. These rocky, spruce-darkened islands are mostly hilly—great granite rises from the ocean, which may not stop a tidal wave but would definitely give it a mild jolt. On the sheltered side it was just about possible that the tsunami might roll right by, perhaps leaving a high surge in its wake, but not dumping and smashing large boats on beaches 10 miles away.
The seamen of the Maine islands were accustomed, more than any other fishermen on the East Coast, to terrible weather. And for three days now, they had been moving the endlessly scattered fleet of lobster boats to anchorages out of harm’s way.
Boats from Monhegan, North Haven, Vinalhaven, Port Clyde, Tennants Harbor, Carver’s Harbor, Frenchboro, Isleboro, and Mount Desert headed inshore, their owners praying that if the giant wave came, the islands, with their huge granite ramparts, would somehow reduce the power of the waves.
Similar prayers on precisely the same subject were almost certainly being offered by somewhat less robust people—librarians, politicians, and accountants, 600 miles south in Washington, D.C. The Library of Congress was also made out of granite from the Mount Desert area. So was the House of Representatives and the Treasury Building.
Out in the deep water, 15 miles from the coast, the three great seaward guardians of Maine’s stern and mighty shoreline—the remote and lonely lighthouses of Matinicus Rock, Mount Desert Rock, and Machias Seal Island—were left to face the coming onslaught single-handedly. According to local scientists, the mega-tsunami would sweep more than 100 feet above them. Whether they would still be there when the water flattened out was anyone’s guess.
Meanwhile, the fishermen and their families were being ferried on to the mainland, where relatives, friends, and volunteers were lined in packed parking lots, waiting to drive them to safety. Maine is a tight-knit, insular community off-season, with fewer than one million residents. At a time like this, they were all brothers and sisters.
In far, far greater danger was Provincetown, the outermost town on Cape Cod, 120 miles to the south across the Gulf of Maine. This small artistic community, set in the huge left-hand sweep of the Cape, is protected strictly by low sand dunes and grass. By that Monday afternoon, it was a ghost town. Those who could, towed their boats down the mid-Cape highway and onto the mainland. The rest just hit the road west and hoped their homes and boats would somehow survive. Lloyds of London was not hugely looking forward to future correspondence with regard to Cape Cod.
All along the narrow land, every resident had to leave. Massachusetts State Police were already supervising the evacuation. All roads leading from all the little cape towns to Route 6A were designated one-way systems—Wellfleet, Truro, Orleans, Chatham, Brewster, Denisport, Yarmouth, Hyannis, Osterville, Cotuit, and Falmouth. No one was to come back until the danger had cleared.
The evacuation, all the way down that historic coastline, was total. The whaling port of New Bedford was deserted by Monday evening, and the flat eastern lowlands of Rhode Island, a myriad of bay shores and islands, were going to be a write-off, if Admiral Badr’s missiles made it to the volcano.
In the shadow of the towering edifice of Newport Bridge, the little sailing town was on the verge of a collective nervous breakdown. Some of the most expensive yachts ever built were home here for the autumn, and many of them had not yet been hauled or had not yet departed for the Caribbean or Florida.
The New York Yacht Club’s headquarters, gazing out onto the harbor, would probably be the first to go if the tidal wave came rolling in past Brenton Point. Offshore, Block Island had been evacuated completely by Sunday night, and whether Newport Bridge itself could survive was touch-and-go.
Farther up the coast, there were obvious areas of impending disaster in the long, narrow New England state of Connecticut. The shoreline was beset by wealthy little seaports, the closer they were to New York, the more plutocratic. Bridgeport, Norwalk, Stamford, Darien, and Greenwich—Connecticut’s Golden Suburbs, all along the narrowing waters of Long Island Sound. Billions of dollars’ worth of manicured property and people, all hoping against hope that central Long Island itself, around 15 miles wide, would bear the brunt of the tsunami.
But it was the northern seaport of New London that was causing the most concern in the state of Connecticut. This is one of the United States Navy’s great submarine bases, and home of the Electric Boat Company, which builds them. It is a traditional Navy town, and there had been ferocious activity since before the weekend, all along the jetties, preparing the big nuclear boats to make all speed south to the west coast of Florida. Unfinished ships were being towed 10 miles upriver—anywhere that might be beyond the reach of the tsunami after it hit the helpless north shore of Long Island Sound.
South of New York, the flat sweep of the Jersey shore, with its miles and miles of vacation homes, was defenseless. So was the entire eastern shore of Maryland, which was nothing but a flat coastal plain on both sides of the Chesapeake Estuary, with no elevation higher than 100 feet and nothing to stop the thunderous tidal wave but the flimsiest of outer islands, not much higher than sand bars beyond the long waters of Chincoteague Bay.
By Monday afternoon, the entire area was almost deserted, hundreds of cars still heading north, joined by another huge convoy from neighboring Delaware, which shared the same long shoreline and was equally defenseless.
South of Virginia, the coastal plain of North Carolina was, if anything, even more vulnerable than Maryland. The Tidewater area was flat, poorly drained, and marshy, meandering out to a chain of low barrier islands—the Outer Banks—separated from the mainland by lagoons and salt marshes. Out on the peninsula of Beaufort, Pamlico, and Cateret Counties, which lie between the two wide rivers the Neuse and the Pamlico, the issue was not whether the giant tsunami would hit and flood, but whether the little seaports would ever stick their heads above the Atlantic again.
Myrtle Beach Air Force Station, right on the coast of South Carolina, was playing a huge role in the evacuation of the coastal region, with a fleet of helicopters in the skies assisting the police with traffic. Hundreds of Air Force personnel were helping evacuate the beautiful city of Charleston, one of the most historic ports in the United States and home of Fort Sumter, where the Civil War began.
Right on the border lies the oldest city in Georgia, the port of Savannah. There were 10,000 troops assisting in the evacuation there, and no one even dared think about the wreckage of this perfect colonial city, so carefully preserved over the centuries, yet so unprotected from the ravages of the ocean.
Florida was, of course, another story, with its 400-mile-long east coast open to the Atlantic, largely devoid of hills and of mountains, all the way south to Miami, Fernandina Beach in the north, then Jacksonville Beach, Daytona and Cocoa Beach, Indian Harbor, Vero Beach, Hobe Sound, Palm Beach, Boca Raton, Fort Lauderdale, and Miami.
Stretching out to the south were the low-lying resorts of the Florida Keys, all the way across the Everglades, right down to the yachtsmen’s paradise of Key West. Although every one of the Keys had borne the wrath of Atlantic hurricanes before, they hadn’t seen a tsunami since long before the Pharaohs ruled Egypt.
The East Coast of the U.S. was absolutely powerless in the face of such a threat. General Rashood had thought out and prepared his attack with immense skill, giving the U.S. population no option but to pack up and run, taking only what little they could carry.
Unless Adm. George Gillmore and his men could find that submarine.
12
1700, Monday, October 5
Atlantic Ocean, 29.48N 13.35W.
OPERATION HIGH TIDE was one of the most complex and large cross-decking operations in recent
memory. The Harry S. Truman stood a half-mile off the port bow of the Ronald Reagan, and it was pouring like the devil, a gusting sou’wester that swept sheets of rain across the carriers’ flight decks.
On paper, the preparations looked simple: to transfer fifty Sikorsky Seahawk helicopters from the deck of the Truman onto the deck of the Ronald Reagan. Trouble was, the deck of the Reagan was already full with the bigger part of its eighty-four embarked aircraft, most of them being flown by four of the most famous fighter squadrons in the United States Air Force.
The new F-14D Tomcat fighter bombers were controlled by the fabled fliers of the VF-2 Bounty Hunters. Three large groups of F/A 18C Hornets were flown by the VMFA 323 Death Rattlers, the VFA-151 Vigilantes, and the VFA-137 Kestrels. In addition, there were the Prowlers and the Vikings, but these were parked carefully away from the main runways.
And then there were the mighty E-2C Group II Hawkeyes, the biggest and most expensive aircraft on any carrier. The early-warning radar and control aircraft, the quarterback of the squadron, first to get in the air, and always parked right below the island, wings folded, ready to head for the stern catapult. No U.S. carrier would leave port without at least three onboard.
Aside from the Prowlers, Vikings, and Hawkeyes, the rest were ready for takeoff from the rainswept deck of their longtime home—the 100,000-ton Nimitz-class carrier, the Ronald Reagan.
Over on the just-arrived Harry S. Truman, fifty Sikorsky Seahawk helicopters, the latest in modern submarine hunting, were lined up alongside the main runway, blades folded, with six just preparing to leave. The U.S. Navy had three hundred of these hovering state-of-the-art ASW specialists, but not one of them had ever been under more steel-edged orders than those received in the Norfolk yards last week.
Admiral Gillmore had left it to the carrier COs to carry out the aircraft exchange, and both Captains had decided on six at a time as the safest method, especially in this weather.
The helicopter maintenance crews were ferried across separately in a Sikorsky CH-53D Sea Stallion assault and support helicopter, transported from Norfolk especially for this phase of the operation. The Sea Stallion was designed to carry thirty-eight Marines, but today, it was to move back and forth between the carriers, laden with spare parts for the Seahawks plus the Navy experts who knew how to fit them. They would also be ferrying the fixed-wing maintenance crews that were returning to the U.S. with the Tomcats and Hornets.
And now the Seahawks were ready. The Truman’s flight-deck controller signaled them away, and one by one their screaming rotors bore them almost vertically into the sky, banking out over the port side of the carrier to form a long convoy that made a wide, slow circular route toward the Reagan.
With six airborne, there was now an open deck for the first of the Reagan’s Tomcats to land. And over on the Battle Group’s flagship there was intense activity. The red light on the island signaled…Four minutes to launch.
The first Tomcat was in position at the head of the runway, the visual checks completed. Two minutes later, the light flicked to amber, and a crewman moved forwards to the catapult and attached it to the launch bar. The light turned green, Lt. Jack Snyder, the “shooter,” raised his right hand and pointed it directly at the pilot. Then he raised his left hand and pointed two fingers…Go to full power…
Then he extended his palm straight out…Hit the afterburners…Immediately, the pilot saluted, and leaned slightly forward, tensing for the impact of the catapult shot.
Lieutenant Snyder, still staring directly at the cockpit, saluted, then bent his knees, extended two fingers on his left hand, then touched the deck. He gestured: FORWARD! And a crewman, kneeling on the narrow catwalk next to the fighter jet, hit the button on catapult one, and ducked low, as the stupendous force of the hydraulic mechanism hurled the jet on its way.
Engines howling, flat-out, it left a blast of hot air in its wake. And, as always, every heart on that deck, every heart in the island control centers, stopped dead. For just a couple of seconds, no one was breathing, as the Tomcat hurtled towards the bow, up the ramp, and out over the water, climbing away, dead ahead, ready to start its 25-mile circle to the flight deck of the Harry S. Truman, which would bear it home to the United States.
Five more times, the flight-deck crew of the Ronald Reagan sent the Tomcats away, up into the lashing rain, before the flight controller, in his fluorescent waterproof yellow gear, signaled that the Seahawks were on their way in.
Back on the Truman, the flight-deck crew anticipated the first of the F-14 Tomcats, which had broken off from the stack of six and circled at 8,000 feet, 20 miles out, heading their way.
It was a 22-ton brute of an aircraft that didn’t just glide in, flaring out elegantly just above a mile-long runway like a big passenger jet, but came bucking in, lurching along in all weathers, at 160 knots, damn near out of gas, and then slamming down onto the deck, the pilot praying for the arresting wire to grab and hold.
If it missed, he would have approximately one-twentieth of a second to ram the throttles wide open and thunder off the flight deck…before $40 million worth of aircraft would hurtle over the side and punch a hole in the ocean’s choppy surface. And there was always the possibility of an outright catastrophe—the hook missing, the pilot’s reaction a shade slow, and the aircraft slewing around, piling into forty others, all within yards of millions of gallons of jet fuel.
However many times a pilot had done it, the exercise of landing a fighter bomber on the heaving deck of a carrier would remain a life-or-death test of nerve and skill.
Right now, on the rain-lashed stern of the Harry S. Truman, the Landing Signals Officer, tall, lanky Texan Eugene “Geeno” Espineli, was in contact with the incoming Tomcat’s pilot, Lt. J. R. Crowell from West Virginia. Geeno’s binoculars were focused as well as they could be in this weather, trying to track the aircraft’s incoming path.
Ensign Junior Grade Taylor Cobb, the Arresting Gear Officer, was calling the shots, bellowing down the phone, above the howl of the wind, to the hydraulics team working below. He was out on the stern in his bright yellow waterproofs, earphones on, his eyes scanning the deck, checking for even the slightest speck of litter, which could suck into the Tomcat’s engine and blow it right out. He was checking for the fourth or fifth time for a broken arrester wire, which could lash back and kill a dozen people, not to mention the absolute certainty of sending the aircraft straight over the bow.
“STAND BY FOR THE TOMCAT…TWO MINUTES!”
The massive hydraulic piston was set to withstand the controlled collision between fighter jet and deck. And now everyone could see J. R. Crowell fighting to hold the Tomcat steady, 2 degrees above the horizontal against the driving rain and unpredictable gusts.
The Truman was pitching through 3 degrees in the long swells, dead into the wind, at 18 knots. She was rising and falling one and a half degrees on either side of the horizontal, which put the bow and stern through 60 feet every 30 seconds—conditions to challenge the deftness and fortitude of any pilot.
“GROOVE!” bawled Ensign Cobb, code for “She’s close, stand by…”
Then, 20 seconds later, “SHORT!”—the critical command, everyone away from the machinery.
Out on the deck, all LSOs edged towards the big padded pit into which they would jump if young JR misjudged and piled into the stern. They could see the aircraft now, screaming in through the rain, engines howling.
“RAMP!” bellowed Ensign Cobb. And with every eye upon it, JR slammed the Tomcat down on the landing surface, and the flight-deck crew breathed again as the cable grabbed the hook, then rose up from the deck into a V. One second later, the Tomcat stopped dead in its tracks, almost invisible in the swirling mist of rain and spray in its wake.
The deck crews came out of the starting blocks like Olympic sprinters, racing towards the aircraft to haul it into its designated parking spot. And out there on the stern, Ensign Cobb, the rain beating off his hood, had already made contact with the second
incoming Tomcat…“Okay one-zero-eight…wind gusting at 38…Check your approach line…Looking good from here…flaps down…hook down…Gotcha visual…You’re all set…C’mon in…”
One by one, they repeated the procedure. Then six more Seahawks took off in the failing light. Then six more Tomcats blasted off the deck of the Reagan and headed for the stack 20 miles astern of the Truman. Six at a time. Then the Hornets, six more groups, all going through the same death-defying combat procedures, slamming the jets down on the deck, the aces of the Death Rattler squadron, the Vigilantes, and the Kestrels.
These unsung heroes of the U.S. Navy displayed the lunatic, rarefied skills of their profession almost always in private, out here in the Atlantic, away from the celebrity-obsessed society they were trying to protect.
It took six hours to complete the transfer of the aircraft, and it was almost midnight when the final Hornet made its landing. By now, the rain had stopped, and the weary flight-deck crews were heading for their bunks. The fighter pilots were going home with the Truman and their aircraft.
The Seahawk crews, now safely on board the Ronald Reagan, were mostly asleep. Their task, their ceaseless, intensive mission, to find the Barracuda, would begin at first light on Tuesday morning, October 6. And there would be little rest until the submarine was detected. If it would be.
Another twenty-four-hour-a-day operation had been taking place simultaneously, 2,700 miles away to the west in the concrete canyons of New York City.
Ten times more vulnerable than Washington, D.C., New York would take the full might of the tidal wave head-on, straight off the ocean. And although the great towers of Wall Street would probably be the most resolute barrier the tidal wave would hit, they could not possibly stop a force that would probably have swept the Verrazzano Narrows Bridge clean off its foundations seven miles earlier, planted the Coney Island fairground on top of Brooklyn Heights, and dumped the Statue of Liberty into the bottom of upper New York Harbor.
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