World in Flames wi-3

by Ian Slater

  In her most recent letter, Melissa had said Stacy was applying for an M.B.A. program scholarship, his tuition to graduate school being paid by an air force scholarship, providing he would serve four years as a crewman in one of the air force’s two-man, or was it “two-person,” missile silos. “It’s a very popular program,” Melissa had written David. Sure it was— sixty feet underground, wanking yourself off while everyone else was overseas with the crap coming from every direction. David could see Stacy now, waltzing about in his missile crewman’s blue jumpsuit, cravat and missile shoulder patch for everyone to see. The thought of Stacy with his finger on the button—

  David could imagine him strutting across campus, writing A-plus papers on the “nuclear threat”—and how taking out a whole city wouldn’t worry him one little bit. Trouble was, after seeing the way the Russians had shot Americans out of hand, David knew he wouldn’t have much trouble pushing the button either if it came to that.

  “Brentwood!” It was like being woken up from a sleep, the British sergeant’s bullish voice rolling down the embankment of the canal. “Brentwood?”

  “Yo,” answered David.

  “You’re to report to Brussels, lad.”

  “There are no hospital ships in Brussels,” he told the sergeant, who was one of the military policy detachments assigned to Liege.

  “Nothing about hospital ships, lad — HQ wants you. Something about prisoners. They suspect there might be a few of those bloody fancy-dress artistes.” Sometimes David didn’t know what the British were talking about. Churchill was right: the English and Americans were two races divided by a common language.

  “You know!” said the sergeant, taking off his beret, bowing and slapping it hard against his thigh before putting it on again. “Artistes. Actors! Those bastards who took our blokes’ uniforms and—”

  “Oh, SPETS,” said David. “What about them?”

  “Brussels thinks they might have captured some of the swine. But they need positive ID, see. We’re rounding up all you blokes from the DB pocket who might have seen ‘em— least, all of you who are still around. London’s dead set on making an example of ‘em. Shoot a few of the pricks. Send a big message to Moscow, right?”

  David was surprised to find himself out of breath after walking up from the canal. His old DI would’ve been disgusted, and he made a mental note right then and there that he’d better get back into shape. “I doubt it’ll make any difference,” he told the sergeant, pausing for breath. “SPETS are very professional. Won’t stop them sending more.”

  “Like you marines, eh?” said the sergeant. He was a much taller man than David, an angry glint in his eye. “Well, I’m inclined to agree, mate,” continued the Brit. “Won’t stop ‘em, I reckon. But London wants to let ‘em know that it’s the high jump if they’re caught. Bump off a couple anyway. Hell — you shouldn’t worry. Free trip to Brussels, lad. See the sights. Wine, women, and song, eh? Train leaves in two hours.”

  “Don’t think I could identify any of the SPETS,” said David, glancing worriedly up at the sergeant. Ahead were long, white, loamy cart tracks beside the canal. Some parts of Europe hadn’t changed in three hundred years. “Except for the guy who shot your lieutenant,” said David.

  “Couple of birds among them, I hear,” said the sergeant, bending down, cracking a fallen branch from one of the poplars, stripping the bark in no time and slapping it under his left arm as if he were the regimental sergeant major on parade.

  David looked up at him, puzzled. “Birds?”

  “Women, lad! You know. Tits and—”

  “Yeah, yeah, I know,” said David. He’d been thinking about Melissa, and, whenever he did, crude descriptions of the female anatomy bothered him.

  “Not interested?” charged the sergeant as they walked along the path, David finding it hard to keep up. The cart track stopped and became a bicycle path by the canal. “Maybe,” said the sergeant lecherously, “you’re dipping your wick into that Admitting filly, eh? Young Lili.” He laughed so loudly, anyone could easily have heard him on the far side of the bank.

  “No such luck,” answered David. The truth was, he hadn’t really tried — he guessed she mustn’t be more than seventeen.

  “Well,” boomed the sergeant, “she’s got the hots for you, boy. Medal of Honor winner and all that—”

  “Yeah, sure,” said David.

  “I’m serious, lad. I’ve seen her giving you the once-over when you pick up your hero mail. Cat, if ever I saw it, mark my words.”

  “Cat?”

  The sergeant thought for a moment, slowed, then stopped. “Ah—“ he said, swiping the top off a long stem of reed grass, “pussy, I mean. Isn’t that what you call it?”

  “Cat!” said David, starting to laugh.

  The sergeant was exploding in laughter again. When he finally got control, he told David that several of the female POWs were supposedly “smashing!”

  “You’ve seen them?” David asked, surprised.

  “No — but word has it.”

  “They’ll be ugly as sin,” said David. “Beards most likely.”

  “Now, don’t be particular, laddie. It’s wartime.”

  “No kiddin’,” David replied.

  “I’m not kidding,” said the sergeant. “It’s in all the newspapers.”

  “You’re nuts,” said David. He was starting to like the Limey.

  “Here,” said the sergeant, thrusting his right hand out, a packet in his hand.

  “What’s this?” It was a strip panel of condoms.

  “If you don’t know what to do with ‘em,” ordered the sergeant, “read the instructions after you get through your fan mail.” He tapped them with his poplar stick. “See?” The condom instructions were in Dutch. “Course,” the sergeant said, “it’s all Greek to me!” and began another belly roll of laughter. But he kept laughing and wouldn’t stop, wildly swiping at more reed grass, tears rolling down his face, until the fixed glint in the Britisher’s eye told David the man was quite mad.

  * * *

  Despite the stinking kerosene fumes from the Avgas sucked in by the air-conditioning, there was a half-hearted cheer in Personnel two levels below the Salt Lake City’s flight deck when the computers came back on line. But they told the personnel director that Lt. Comdr. Frank Shirer was presently assigned to the Tomcat squadron at Dutch Harbor on Unalaska in the easternmost sector of the Aleutian arc. Shot down over the western Aleutians eight weeks before, following an air strike from the carrier, and picked up by a helo from one of the nine escorts in the battle group, Shirer had been taken to Unalaska. Because of the “big show” in Europe, pilots were in short supply on the Aleutian front, and Shirer had quickly found himself seconded to the air force’s Sixty-Fifth Wing stationed at Dutch Harbor.

  What the computer didn’t reveal was that between sorties over the Russian-captured outposts of Adak and Shemya at the westernmost reaches of the Aleutian arc, Shirer had renewed a fleeting romance in Dutch Harbor with a Wave nurse, Lana Brentwood, whom he’d met years before in Washington. But the screen did show that Shirer was “AFR-CD — available for recall” to the carrier at the captain’s discretion.

  “Very well,” the captain informed the personnel director, “check with Dutch Harbor. My hunch is they’ll be about as unhappy as I am to have one of our top guns reassigned to Washington. But if the Pentagon wants him, I’m not going to stand in their way. Any advisory on why they want him back east?”

  The personnel officer’s reply was drowned by the roar of a Grumman EA-Prowler, or “Wild Weasel,” one of the ship’s electronic countermeasures aircraft, landing on the “roof.”

  “Say again?” asked the captain, his eyes on a yellow jacket far below whose thumb was held high in the air as he sprinted away from the nose of the Prowler, the wash of jet engines flapping the man’s vest, the plane’s proboscislike midair refueling spout giving it the look of some giant insect anxious to be on its way.

  “COMPAC gives
no reason for requesting Shirer, sir.” The Prowler was off, swallowed by the darkness.

  “Very well,” said the captain, slapping the personnel director on the shoulder. “Ours not to reason why, Phil. Draw up the papers. I’ll sign them end of the watch. Where’s Shirer now?”

  “Dutch Harbor, sir.”

  The captain nodded “okay,” but the personnel director knew the old man was still trying to figure out why the hell Washington, awash in top brass, would bother to recall one of the fleet’s top aces at a time when the damn Russians were at the back door in the Aleutians, clearly using Shemya and Adak as advance carriers to island-hop along the island chain, readying to hit America’s western and most vulnerable flank. For his part, the PD was concerned it might be a bureaucratic screwup. It had happened before — a liaison officer in San Diego ordered verbally by Washington to grab the first available flight to what was supposed to be Oakland, the guy ending up twenty-four hours later in Auckland, New Zealand.

  “We have any other Shirers aboard?” asked the captain. As he waited for the answer from the PD, he never shifted his gaze from the flight deck, watching the crews working feverishly, the carrier launching a plane every forty-seven seconds. Meanwhile, other aircraft from the battle group’s constant combat patrols were coming in to land at over 150 miles an hour. One slip could take out two pilots, flight deck crew, and billion-dollar aircraft in milliseconds.

  “Captain,” came the PD’s reply. “We’ve got four Shirers. One also a Frank. A purple jacket. But his number’s—”

  “Never mind the number. Get a repeat from Washington, Phil. Son of a bitch, what’d I tell you? Another Pentagon snafu.”

  The PD requested verification of Shirer’s service number. One wrong digit was all it would take.

  The confirmation came back within the hour. It was Frank Shirer, the fighter ace at Dutch Harbor, whom Washington wanted. When he received the information, the captain sighed resignedly, telling his executive officer that neither Salt Lake City nor the Aleutian command could afford the loss of even one pilot, with more air-supported land battles shaping up in the Aleutians. “Very well,” he instructed the personnel director. “Send message to Dutch Harbor — immediate for Shirer.”

  “Yes, sir.”

  “But, Phil—”

  “Sir?”

  “I want that F-14 back here. He can be ferried back to Pearl from here and then to Washington via San Diego. He might be their fair-haired boy, but the plane’s ours! Got it?”

  “Yes, sir.”

  “Washington,” put in the executive officer, “is probably going to give him another medal.”

  The skipper shrugged. “Even Washington’s not that stupid. He could receive it in the field. It’s got me beat, I’m tellin’ ya. It’s ridiculous.” The executive officer agreed.

  So did Shirer.

  CHAPTER SEVEN

  Whether it had been McRae’s morbid description of how Maclain Macdonald and his clan had been cut down or whether it was the strange effect of the subdued light in the western Highlands that was responsible for his sense of unease, Robert Brentwood wasn’t sure, but the sight of the Glencoe Massacre was unexpectedly grim and unsettling. Looking over the jagged outcrops of the gloomy glen, he understood how it was the stuff not only of the inevitable ghost stories but of many a Highlander’s sense of separation from other men. More than one Scot, sober as the bitter cold, had sworn by everything holy that he’d seen the blood-streaked face of Alastair Maclain Macdonald.

  “By God, this is a barren place,” he said to Rosemary as he stopped the car in one of the pull-outs, the sight of a red English phone booth standing by the road a hundred yards away distinctly anachronistic to the mournful, wind-riven nature of the place, the booth’s solitary presence only adding to Robert’s sense of anomie and to what Rosemary called the “spirit-filled” strangeness of the place.

  Soon, out of the bruised sky above Ben Nevis ten miles to the north, more mist descended and at times completely obscured the long ribbon of narrow road behind them that had wound through the lonely valley to the desolate glen. Despite the mist, Robert was able to see a lone car.

  “Second time,” said Robert.

  “Second time for what?” asked Rosemary as they paused on their way back from the monument, walking toward what Rosemary called their car of “ill repute.”

  “What? Oh—” Brentwood caught himself. “Nothing. Just noticed that car down there’s a yellow Honda Civic. Didn’t realize there were so many in Scotland.”

  “Lord,” said Rosemary easily. “They’re common as colds in England. That other couple at the B and B had one as well — the Prices.”

  “Did they?” Robert asked surprised.

  “Yes. Rental companies love them.”

  “Why?”

  “Easy, silly. Less accidents in the fog. Best color, yellow— though I think it’s ghastly.” Then she surprised him again. “Besides, Robert, if they were following us, I should think they’d be a little more subtle than that. I mean, the only other car on the road.”

  “Huh—” grunted Robert. Perhaps he was being a little paranoid. But as one of the elite skippers whose sub was one of the most powerful in the world as well as being his country’s last line of defense in the event the war went nuclear, he and everyone else on the Sea Wolf II knew their vigilance didn’t start and end with the sub. Even so, Rosie had a point. Why would the Prices, if it was them — or the other people, or anyone — be so obvious as to be seen? “Unless…”he began, but trailed off as more thick clouds born about the summit of Ben Nevis gathered and came rolling down, obliterating Glencoe’s stark beauty.

  It wasn’t until they were halfway to the ferry that Rosemary, struck by Robert’s unusual bout of suspicion, felt her chest tightening in a rush of fear as she realized Russian agents would have no compunction in murdering a nuclear submarine’s captain. She turned to him wide-eyed in terror.

  “It’s an occupational hazard,” he explained quietly. “Everybody knows about it when they join up.”

  “Is that supposed to comfort me?”

  “Guess not. Sorry — I shouldn’t have…” He paused, smiling. “Hell, we could get hit by a bus. You can’t live in a box.”

  “You can the in one,” she said. “My God, you mean you accept this as a normal part of your—”

  “Right. Besides, honey, I do have my executive officer here.”

  For a second, Rosemary was nonplussed.

  “No,” Robert explained, shifting down, using the gears as a brake on the narrow, wet road. “I don’t mean Pete Zeldman,” he said.

  “Well then, who do you…”

  Robert pressed the glove box button. Nothing happened. He punched it and the compartment lid dropped, spilling out road maps as well as a Smith & Wesson.45.

  Rosemary, gasping for breath, recoiled from it as if it were a snake.

  “Don’t worry,” he said casually. “Safety’s on.”

  Steering with his right hand, he slipped the.45 between them and stuffed the maps back into the glove box. “Don’t look so shocked, honey. It’s only a gun. There is a war going on.”

  Rosemary started to say something but was still too astonished by the sight of the gun.

  “Hey,” he said, slipping his arm around her shoulder, “it was supposed to reassure you. That’s what it’s for.”

  “Well, it doesn’t,” she answered emphatically, looking up at him as if in some way she were seeing him for the first time. “Why didn’t you tell me this before?”

  “They issue them for protection while we’re ashore — not to frighten brides.”

  “It doesn’t frighten me,” she said, staring at the gun, its khaki-green camouflage pattern making it appear more ominous to her. “It terrifies me.”

  “Hon,” he assured her, “I wasn’t going to show you, but you seemed so wound up about these—”

  “You were wound up,” she answered.

  “Yeah — well—” He was using his lef
t sleeve to wipe condensation off the windshield, the diaphanous fog now pierced by rays of sunlight streaming down on the moss-covered crags.

  “They’re gone!” she said, watching the rearview mirror. Robert adjusted it from where she’d twisted it to one side, combing her hair before they’d got out to see the Glencoe memorial. Now he could see the road farther back, but she was right — the long stretch of blacktop along the valley floor was bereft of movement. Ahead lay Loch Ballachulish, where, Rosemary informed him, they would have to catch a ferry across the loch on their way to Mallaig, the fishing village six miles farther up on the rugged west coast. In the prewar days, Mallaig had been a “repairs” port for Russian trawlers out of the Kola Peninsula, some suspected of being SIGLINT — signal intelligence — listening for NATO sub traffic around the Holy Loch sub pens eighty miles south from which, all being well, Roosevelt would set out on another war patrol as soon as Robert Brentwood returned from his honeymoon a week from now.

  “I hope the ferry’s on time,” said Rosemary anxiously as they rounded the U-bend leading down to the loch.

  “Doesn’t matter,” said Robert. “We can fill in the time.”

  She looked quickly at him. “Oh no you don’t! Not again. I’m not—”

  “No,” he said, “I didn’t mean that.”

  “You didn’t?” she asked, feigning astonishment. “You’re ill!” She took in a deep breath, leaning back on the headrest, telling herself not to be a ninny — feeling better now that the car hadn’t been seen following them after all. “You’re getting tired of me,” she charged playfully.