by Ian Slater
Because she hadn’t confided in anyone, especially her parents, she sometimes felt that her mother thought she expected too much. But all she wanted was a marriage like Beth and Ray’s — not perfect by any means, but built on bedrock, not on shifting sand. Or was it bedrock? Could it ever be? Perhaps Beth wasn’t confiding in anyone either — keeping it bottled up inside and caged by pride. At least Beth would have the children. Jay had wanted them, a son especially, but his violence took care of that, too, and induced a miscarriage in Lana. He’d got mad about that. As usual, that was her fault, too, but — God forgive her — she had seen it then and saw it now as a blessing, not to herself but for the child who would have grown up with Jay — a nightmare that Beth, with all her troubles, didn’t have to contend with. Perhaps Jay would change? No, she thought, he wouldn’t.
The Humvee’s horn startled her, and she stepped smartly to the shoulder of the road and turned to see the driver.
“Lieutenant Brentwood?” It was a sergeant from Dutch Harbor HQ. “You’re wanted back at the base, ma’am. Commander Morin’s request.”
“Requested or ordered?” Lana asked, though she didn’t really care, her sharp tone merely one of fright.
“He didn’t say, ma’am.”
“It’s all right, Sergeant,” said Lana, moving around to the passenger side. “I’m not going anywhere. Just out for my daily constitutional.”
“Yes, ma’am. Pretty soon you’re gonna need more than that anorak.”
Jay La Roche still on her mind, Lana read more into the sergeant’s comment than he meant. They didn’t call the Aleutian’s “America’s Siberia” for nothing — it felt like exile, the need for companionship, for women, ever greater than was usual for a military base. And for some, like Lana, who’d committed an infraction against the rules, the Aleutians posting was meant to be an exile, a punishment, and with your punishment came your file: “Severely reprimanded for conduct unbecoming an officer,” in Lana’s case. Would it have been unbecoming, she thought wryly, for a noncom nurse to have given young Spence the comfort of sexual release? There had been a lot of jokes in her wake about the “unbecoming” bit, but by now she was used to it. At least she’d developed an armor against the more vulgar suggestions and leers of men who had been given the choice of Unalaska or permanent latrine duty at Parris Island or Camp Lejeune. After what her brother David had gone through in marine boot camp at Parris Island, Lana could well understand why some chose the blustery isolation of the Aleutians. And now, David was God knew—
She turned on the driver. “Is it about my brother?”
The sergeant was pumping the brakes on a patch of black ice and shifting down so the truck roared. “What’s that, ma’am?” he shouted.
“Colonel Morin — has he got news of my brother, David?”
“No idea, ma’am. All I was told was to come and get you.”
She felt cold now in the pit of her stomach. What was so urgent that on this godforsaken island in this godforsaken chain, the base commander had sent out a Humvee for her? It was either David or Robert. Or was it their parents? Perhaps all of them. It couldn’t possibly be—
“Ma’am?”
“Yes?”
“Can I ask you something off the record?”
She nodded — not sure whether she should have.
“You ever go out with enlisted men?” asked the sergeant.
“No.”
“Just thought I’d ask.”
“I–I’m sorry. I didn’t mean for it to sound like that — it’s not — I don’t go out with anyone, Sergeant.” Oh, Lord, she thought, now they ‘d say she was a lesbian. No they wouldn’t— not after young Spence and her conduct “unbecoming an officer.” Or maybe that wouldn’t make any difference? From the men’s point of view, up here, any woman would do. Even so, she hadn’t meant to offend the sergeant. “I didn’t mean to sound—”
“S’all right, ma’am. I understand.”
No you don’t, thought Lana. Now she was confused in her anxiety over why she’d been sent for. She desperately wanted reassurance, her old fears suddenly resurfacing; a feeling of vulnerability and fright combined overwhelmed her. She wished Shirer were here. What she wouldn’t give for a man to hold her, to love her. Not sex, not to start with anyway. Just to be held. As she watched the light fading from Dutch Harbor, the hills around the base took on a chilling blue aura, at once beautiful, ethereal almost. And threatening.
* * *
“You wanted to see me, Commander?” asked Lana, trying to read in his face what it was all about before he spoke.
“Yes,” answered Commander Morin. “Close the door, will you, Lieutenant.” There was another man in the Quonset hut — a fisherman by the look of his rough white Cowichan knit sweater, its bald eagle wings in full span across the man’s barrel-shaped chest. At first glance he gave the impression of being overweight, but Lana realized it was probably the oilskins covering his considerable frame that gave her the impression.
“Lieutenant Brentwood,” said Morin, a small, stocky man, his height in marked contrast to the considerably bigger man, whom he introduced as “Mr. Bering,” Bering’s wild salt-and-pepper beard framing a time- and wind-ravaged face.
Bering reminded Lana of the prewar magazine Alaska Men—maybe it was still being published. In Alaska, men, outnumbering eligible females three to one — now five to one with the troops stationed there — had advertised in the magazine in the lower forty-eight states for prospective mates. Bering had a burly, honest look about him, clearly undaunted by the unfamiliar military surroundings, though it wasn’t the kind of location she would expect to find him in. He looked born to the sea. Lana wondered why the man, in his late thirties, perhaps early forties, and fit-looking now that she saw him closer, wasn’t in uniform until Morin introduced him as a “crabber.” Shellfish meat from the Aleutians was now in ever-higher demand in Japan and the United States, with Japan’s fleet of shellfish trawlers unable to break out north of Hokkaido Island into the fishing grounds of the vast North Pacific because of the Soviet sub blockade that extended from Vladivostok to Kamchatka Peninsula. Without the American fish supply to Japan via Hawaii, and the long southern route around the sub packs, Japan would soon be in the same position as Britain had been when Hitler’s U-boat blockade threatened to bring that country to its knees. All the Soviets had to do was delay the food supplies to Japan as effectively as they had interfered with the NATO reinforcements across the Atlantic — close the ring for another twelve weeks — and the equation of men and materiel would shift decidedly to the Soviets’ favor. Then there would be no way out, except nuclear, and that was no way at all.
Morin was asking Lana how well she knew Captain Alen. She was sitting, feeling too bulky and hot in the overheated room, and asked for permission to remove her parka. Bering, who had taken a seat to the right of the commander’s desk, sat with his arms draped nonchalantly about the back of the plastic molded chair, blue eyes unapologetically X-raying her newly revealed shape.
“I want you to understand, Lieutenant,” began Commander Morin, shifting his gaze to Bering, “both of you, that this meeting is strictly off the record.” It struck Lana then that Bering was really a regular naval officer — the unkempt beard and ruddy cheeks a front, along with the easy affability and apparently unconcerned air. But for what? Drugs on the base?
“Mr. Bering,” explained Morin, “is a longtime resident of Unalaska.”
“Oh—” said Lana, smiling. Waiting.
Morin looked down at a three-ring binder, paused for a moment. “How long did you know him, Lieutenant?”
Bering was making her feel undressed. “The pilot?” pressed Morin, irritated that he hadn’t the effect on her that Bering obviously did. “The Hercules that crashed.” Morin was looking up at her.
“Not long at all,” said Lana.
“He’d invited you to fly to Adak with him. Is that correct?”
“Yes, sir.”
“You didn�
�t go?”
What was Morin on about? Lana wondered. It was a dumb question. Of course she didn’t go — otherwise she’d be dead.
“Why was that? Records show you were off duty. You didn’t report in sick, did you?”
“No, sir, but I’d just received a wire from the War Department about my brother the night before the flight. He’d been reported missing in action. On the morning I was to go with Lieutenant Alen, I picked up a VOA broadcast about the situation in Europe and I decided to stay and listen.”
Morin nodded, his eyes back on the file, then up at her again. The sound of the electric clock on the wall behind him was a taint buzz, which Lana could now hear quite distinctly in the silence of the room.
“Yes,” said Morin. “I’m sorry.” He paused. “You ever see him drunk?”
Lana was nonplussed. “No — not that I—”
“I don’t mean in duty,” said the commander. “Socially?”
“No,” replied Lana. “I hardly knew him… He invited me up for the run to Adak, that’s all.”
“How about his copilot, then?”
“I didn’t know him at all, Commander.”
Morin was tapping a pencil on the desk, letting it slip through his fingers, reversing it, obviously in a quandary.
“I don’t think,” proffered Lana, “that he was the type to get drunk before a flight, sir, if that’s what you’re concerned about. Anyway, as far as I remember, the plane was hit by volcanic debris when Mount Vsevidof blew.”
“Yes,” said Morin, rolling the pencil back and forward between his hands. “That’s what we thought. We did have a four point six on the Richter — but that’s not unusual for this part of the world. Anyway, it doesn’t usually accompany an eruption. Weather boys tell me they’d expect something around seven point one for the volcanoes to blow their tops.” He paused, leveling the pencil at Bering. “This gentleman says he was in the area off Vsevidof that morning — how far out did you say?”
Lana liked Bering, so laid-back, his thumbs hooked in the pockets of his coveralls, legs outstretched as if he might be getting ready to take a nap. “ ‘Bout seven — ten miles,” he told the commander. “Halfway between Mount Vsevidof and Okmok Caldera.” He was smiling at Lana. “Next island west of us, miss. Caldera’s the ash lip of the old volcano-still steams a lot. Adds to the fog. But I never heard the noise, you see — I mean the noise of anything being thrown up-volcanic rocks. They go through the air with a kind of hissing noise. Lava starts to cool as it flies through the air and when it hits the sea. Once you’ve heard it — you never forget.”
“But,” cut in Morin, pressing into his left palm hard with the pencil’s eraser and looking straight at Lana, “he thinks he heard—”
“Know I heard, Colonel,” said Bering, though he was still watching Lana.
“All right,” Morin corrected himself, “he heard another sound.”
“Well,” said Bering, “like I said, I saw the flash first. Then a booming sound a few seconds later.”
“He thinks,” said Morin, “that it was a missile.”
Now she told the commander she realized why he was so concerned — it looked as if one of their own aircraft in the fighter umbrella that constantly patrolled the Aleutian arc had accidentally shot down the Hercules, killing Alen, the copilot, engineer, and nurse Mary Reilley. The military called it “friendly fire,” but you ended up just as dead.
“No,” the commander corrected her. “I’ve done a thorough check of that possibility. No fighter cover over the area at that time.” He glanced up at the map of the Aleutian arc, where he’d ringed the wild, grass-topped basalt group generally known as the Islands of Four Mountains, which thrust out of the sea three hundred miles west of Unalaska’s Dutch Harbor.
“A Bogey?” suggested Lana, surprised at her ready use of the preflight lingo she’d picked up at the base.
The commander shook his head. “Nothing on our radar. Nothing at all.”
“But,” interjected Lana, “our radar at Shemya Island and Adak should have picked up anything coming our way. I mean—”
“Exactly,” said Morin, mildly irritated that she knew enough to ask the question. “Shemya’s phased radar and Adak Naval Station should have seen anything coming our way — at least half an hour warning. Even if they were flying at Mach 2.” The commander paused. “Which is why the Russians would like to take those two stations out — reduce our warning time.”
“Then how,” pressed Lana, “would a missile—”
“That’s why I’ve asked you here,” said Morin. “To check out Alen. If they’d goofed up, accidentally fired off a flare or whatever, it might have been what Mr. Bering believes—”
“It wasn’t a flare, Colonel. I’d bet old Sea Goose on that.” He smiled at Lana. “My trawler.”
“Oh.”
“It was going way too fast for a flare, Commander,” continued Bering. “I’ve seen enough of those from Search and Rescue to know the difference.” Without taking his hands out of his pockets, Bering indicated the map. “Looked to be coming up from the vicinity of Four Islands.”
Now Lana realized precisely what it was that the commander was worried about. If a missile had been fired at the Hercules from a submarine, then it most likely had advance notice of the aircraft’s destination and so its probable flight path. Lana was about to assure the commander that she certainly hadn’t told anyone, but—”I–I did mention it to Nurse Reilley when I found out I couldn’t go for the ride.”
“The nurse who went instead of you?” asked Morin.
“Yes. She took my place. But she would hardly have had time to tell anyone—”
“I’m not saying she did,” responded the commander. “But all it takes is for someone to send a millisecond burst signal to the sub. At least a dozen or so people on the base knew the plane was doing a supply run to Adak.”
“But wouldn’t we pick up a signal like that?” asked Lana.
“Yes, and I’ve checked all signals as well as fighter patrol times — and I’ve had the reports from Adak and Shemya cross-referenced on that day. Nothing. They don’t show any sub intercept.”
Lana thought he’d snap the pencil in half as he sought an explanation.
“I don’t think you’ve got a security leak,” said Bering. “Plane just happened to be there. Too much damn coincidence otherwise.”
The pencil was still, Morin clearly relieved by Bering’s implied conclusion — that no one in Morin’s command was an agent, that it was simply coincidence, that the downing of the Hercules had occurred in Dutch Harbor’s area of responsibility.
But the commander’s satisfaction was short-lived as he reminded himself how the military was loath to believe in coincidence. It was too often a cover-up for incompetence. And God knew there were enough dissatisfied people posted to the Aleutians that he couldn’t dismiss the possibility his command had a leak. In any event, it was a case of cover your ass, which meant checking out the Four Mountains as well as requesting a security sweep of any civilians on the island, many of them of Aleut-Russian heritage from the days when Dutch Harbor was used as the main base for Russian fur sealers. The Aleuts had been poorly treated during World War II, many interned in run-down fish canneries on the Alaskan mainland. It was quite possible the Russians had infiltrated at least a few of them. On the one hand, if he sent any of his men to do a search of the four small islands, it would raise the question of a possible spy or spies, and it wasn’t a smart move careerwise to stir anything up if you couldn’t deliver. On the other hand, if an aircraft could be brought down anywhere over the thousand-mile arc, America’s back door was open.
Perhaps it had nothing to do with anyone on the island-perhaps a missile was fired from a sub. After all, in the Second World War Japanese subs — the big I boats — had shelled Oregon and California. But then, how could Morin explain how the noise of an enemy sub had gone undetected, given the extensive network of sonar arrays around the Aleutians? A sub story jus
t wouldn’t stand up. But if Bering was right, if a missile had been fired from one of the islands, it was unlikely that out of the ten types of Soviet air-to-surface missiles, they would use anything as big as an SS-19 with its range of forty-eight hundred miles. It was much more likely they would use something like the shorter-range, shoulder-mounted “Grails,” which could have been fired low and fast enough to evade Dutch Harbor’s radar 130 miles to the east. It would have taken only a few seconds from a base somewhere on the four small islands to bring down the big Hercules.
Morin asked Bering if, seeing he knew the island so well, he would be prepared to act as scout for a search-and-destroy mission to the Four Islands.