He turned and faced the communications officer. “Why in hell can’t you talk to her?”
“They’re not answering on any circuit, Captain. We don’t think they’re transmitting on any frequency. None of their radars are radiating. They’re observing EMCON.” EMCON meant “emissions control.”
The captain picked up the Navy Red telephone and pushed the transmit button futilely. He wiped his forehead and slowly put the instrument back into its cradle.
“They’re certainly in a hurry to go somewhere,” the ops officer observed calmly. He had always found it best to stay calm when the skipper blew off steam.
“Okay,” the captain said, his voice back to normal. “Get on the horn to Sixth Fleet. Tell him what’s going on. See if he knows something we don’t. Find out what he wants us to do. And get off a flash OPREP to Washington.” An OPREP was an “operational report,” used to advise naval headquarters of emergencies.
“We’re doing all the turns we can, sir,” the OOD piped up. “We’re not going to catch them if they keep this speed up.”
“Thank you, Mr. Epley,” the Old Man said sourly. He gestured at the communications officer. “Okay. Call Sixth Fleet and send the OPREP. Ops, you get down to Combat and sort out the surface picture. The United States isn’t talking to us, she’s not talking to anybody. She may run down one of these civilians. Try to call anyone in her way on the civilian emergency nets and tell them to get the hell out of the way. And if that doesn’t work, we’ll pick up survivors.”
“Aye aye, sir.”
“Willie,” he said to the navigator. “I want to know where we are every damn minute and where we’re heading. I don’t want to follow those fools smack onto a reef or island at thirty-three knots. Let me see a chart with a projection of this course. They may be running for a launch position.” That was the hypothesis that made the most sense, really. The carrier was silently racing to get into position to launch a strike. But against whom?
It’s like a nightmare, the captain told himself as he looked at the backs of his departing officers. One day they had a war and nobody told you. Is this the big one? Naw, they would have told us, for Chrissake! Maybe Laird James and Earl Parker have gone off their nut. Maybe there’s been a mutiny.
Infuriated and thoroughly confused, the captain sat in his chair and tried to get his blood pressure under control as his ship labored into the swells. White water spewed back from the bow, then the bow rose clear of the sea and crashed majestically into the next swell in another thunderous cloud of spray. He pushed his squawk-box button for the chief engineer and warned him to be ready to cut power to the shafts instantly if the screws came out of the water.
He had gotten his ship underway in record time, getting the anchor up in seventeen minutes from the time the capstan had began to turn. Due to the sonar dome under the bow, he couldn’t move the ship until the anchor cleared the water. The United States had been seven miles ahead, but he had managed to close the distance because she had stayed at seventeen knots for almost twenty minutes. Then she accelerated to thirty-three. Now, with the larger swells here in the open sea, he was hard-pressed just to match her speed. Sooner or later he would close on her; if she turned port or starboard he would turn inside her and close, providing he didn’t have to back off some turns to keep the screws in the water and could stay with her.
Something was seriously wrong aboard United States. He tried to imagine a combination of circumstances in peacetime that would justify a capital ship weighing anchor unannounced in the dead of night and steaming off alone, without her escorts, at high speed through crowded shipping lanes with radar and radios silent. When, or if, he caught up with her, it wouldn’t hurt to be ready for anything. “Lieutenant Epley, sound general quarters.”
* * *
Meanwhile, aboard United States, Jake Grafton was huddled in engineering with the ship’s department heads and every squadron skipper who was aboard, plus about half the executive officers. His operations officer and the flag ops boss were also present. Jake had told Qazi when he called the second time that restoring power to the elevators would require half an hour, and Qazi had given him half that time. Still, twenty minutes had passed and the new circuit had not been energized. All that remained was the throwing of a switch by the load dispatcher in Central Control. Jake had not yet told him to throw the switch.
“Goddammit, Captain,” the weapons boss shouted, “We can’t just let that terrorist take some bombs and fly off this ship. We can’t.” This statement was merely a rehash of arguments voiced for the last ten minutes by desperate, angry men crowded around Jake.
“Now you listen,” Jake said calmly, “All of you. This is going to be the last word. I’ve listened to all your arguments. We’ve hashed and rehashed this for ten minutes. In my opinion, we’ve got no other choice. This man has us by the balls. None of you has suggested a viable alternative course of action.”
“Goddammit—”
“No! Don’t you cuss at me! I’m the man responsible and I’ve made the fucking decision. End of discussion!”
“I still don’t see why we can’t zap his choppers with missiles when they are about five miles out, after the bomb is disarmed.” Everyone assumed that Qazi would leave an armed weapon on deck that he could explode by radio control if he were pursued.
“Bullshit. We’ve got no radar.” Jake pushed his way to the engineering watch officer’s desk and picked up the 1-MC microphone. “Central Control, this is Grafton. Energize the emergency circuit to the forward weps elevators.” He threw the mike on the desk.
“Now when these people get gone, I want every E-2 and F-14 on the flight deck that can fly fueled and armed for an immediate takeoff. You skippers, get your crews suited up and briefed. Weapons, get ready to bring missiles up from the magazines. And get some senior people to inspect those magazines as soon as the terrorists get out of them. Qazi may leave something ticking down there. Air Department, get your people ready to go. We’re going to shoot down Mr. Qazi and his friends when they’re the hell and gone away from this ship.” They stood and stared. “Do it now.”
“Jesus, CAG,” the weapons boss said. “You should have told us that ten minutes ago. We thought you were just going to let them get away.”
Jake shooed them out. He bummed a cigarette and sat down with shaking hands to smoke it. These guys weren’t using their heads. Qazi had had all the answers up to this point; he probably had an answer to the possibility of aircraft pursuers. The likeliest answer was just to detonate the bomb aboard ship when he was five or six miles away at fifty feet over the ocean, tail-on to the blast. Still, in war nothing ever goes the way you’ve planned it, so the name of the game is keeping options open. The ship’s officers just don’t realize how few options we have. He had decided earlier, when the discussion started, not to stress the fact that there was a 90 percent chance no one on this ship would live another hour. So now they have a straw to grab for, something to do to keep them and the men busy while the last minutes tick by.
“CAG,” Triblehorn said after the others had filed out. “Maybe you should let the crew know what this terrorist is up to? Make an announcement on the 1-MC.”
“So everyone can have a final moment to polish their soul before they get cremated alive? Nope. We don’t need any panic. They’ll have to go meet their maker with the tarnish still on. Death’s a come-as-you-are deal, anyway.”
What a great naval leader you are, Jake Grafton. Here you are, twenty-three years in the navy, presiding over a naval debacle that will make Pearl Harbor look like a minor traffic accident. And if by some miracle you survive, the admirals and congressmen will cram your nuts into a vise and take turns on the handle.
“How come you don’t have any ashtrays down here?” he asked the engineering watch officer.
“The XO made us take them out. Smoking’s bad for you.”
“No kidding. Look where it’s got me,” Jake said. “Call the master-at-arms shack and have them bring
me a big bolt-cutter. One of those things they use to cut padlocks off. Tell them to hurry.”
“You sent for me, CAG?” The speaker was a senior chief petty officer wearing glasses. His name tag read “Archer, EOD.” EOD meant Explosive Ordnance Disposal.
“Yeah. Pull up a chair and drop anchor.” The senior chief did as requested. He was of modest stature, with intelligent eyes and even, regular features. His uniform hung on him as if it were tailor-made. He had fine, delicate hands. He looked as if he were really a banker or an accountant, except for the bare legs of a tattooed woman on his upper arm which peeped out from under his short-sleeved khaki shirt.
“Senior Chief, I need some answers about nuclear weapons. We’ve got a little problem.”
26
The United States pitched gently in the corrugated sea as she charged onward through the night at flank speed, a gentle seesawing of the bow and stern that her crew, accustomed as they were, ignored. They did notice, however, the vibration as her four thirty-three-ton screws thrashed the sea to foam. Inside the ship one could feel the vibration in the decks and passageways and half sense it in the air, a dynamic tension of ominous power and urgency.
The wind had veered more to the east. It was fresh and crisp and empty of rain. Through the opening rifts in the clouds stars were visible, had anyone on the flight deck taken the time to glance upward. From force of habit Jake Grafton did as he stepped on deck trailed by four armed marines in camouflage utilities and helmets. In his right hand he carried a walkietalkie. Beside him Senior Chief Archer carried his toolbox in one hand and the bolt-cutter in the other. Jake sniffed the sea wind and saw the stars’ brightness in the inky tears in the clouds above. The temperature here on the flight deck was fifteen degrees or so colder than inside the ship. He shivered and peered about the deck.
He and his companions stood amid a forest of aircraft with wings jutting upward at crazy angles. Ahead of him on the right the island loomed with its band of red and white floodlights around the top combining to cast a soft, reddish glare on the deck and aircraft. Behind the island and nearer to him a mast reached up into the blackness. On this mast were numerous antennas. He stared at it a second, slightly puzzled. Oh yes, the radar dishes weren’t rotating.
He walked forward, toward the bow, between the aircraft until he could see the helicopters parked on the angle. He moved in beside a plane and waited, hoping his night vision would improve. Sentries lay on the deck around the choppers, facing outward. Behind the prone men a supervisor walked slowly back and forth with an assault rifle cradled in his arms. The rotors of the choppers were still and the engines silent.
A row of E-2s were parked athwartships between the helicopters and the island, their noses pointed at the helicopters. Forward of the Hawkeyes, Jake could see the rows of aircraft that were parked atop the bow catapults facing aft, with nose tow bars attached so they could be quickly towed aft and spotted for a launch. Beyond the airplanes on the bow and to the left, outboard, of the helicopters on the angle the blackness of the night made a formless curtain.
Up on the bow between the rows of aircraft, about six hundred feet from where Jake stood, were the upper openings of the forward magazine weapons elevators. Qazi would wheel his weapons down between the parked planes and over to the choppers.
Something smacked the airplane on Jake’s right, a stuttering, smacking sound, and Jake’s eyes went involuntarily to the plane. He glanced toward the sentries in time to see the twinkling muzzle flashes from the weapons of one of the men stretched upon the deck. The rippling thud of more bullets striking metal came from the airplane beside him.
“Quick, get back! Everyone back.”
“Sir,” one of the marines said in a stage whisper, “I can take that guy—”
“Get back out of sight. I don’t want them shooting up these airplanes, and I told you no fucking shooting without my okay! Now get back there, goddammit!” Jake followed the retreating marines. He crouched down under a plane and peered forward between the mainmounts and belly tanks, trying to see the men around the helicopters in the glare of the island floods. He could just make them out. Here under the airplanes Jake and his party were in darkness, invisible to the sentries.
Son of a … All the planes in the hangar destroyed and now they were shooting holes in the ones here on the roof! God damn those bastards! He could well understand the marine’s frustration. Qazi didn’t just have all the good cards; he had the whole deck!
“CAG! Better come look.” It was one of the marines. Jake moved toward the sound. Three of the marines were checking a man lying on the deck. “Dead, with a bullet in the head.” Jake looked. “And here’s a shotgun.” It was one of the men of the flight deck security watch that Reynolds had armed. The young man’s eyes were open, and to Jake it seemed as if the dead man were staring straight at him.
* * *
“Okay, Ski. It’s on and working.” Pak and Gardner and three other sailors crouched beside Kowalski in the waist bubble. He was sitting on the floor. They slowly inched their heads up to the windows so they could see the deck and swiveled their heads back and forth, taking in the choppers and the figures around them. “When are we going to do it?”
“Not until they’re aboard those things and ready to take off. If we popped them right now, they might come down to the catapult spaces and gun everybody. We can’t take a chance like that.”
“How are we going to do it?”
“From the control panel below deck.” The primary JBD controls were on a panel in the catwalk, abeam the JBDs for Cats Three and Four. But it was too risky to have someone crawl along the catwalk to the panel with that crowd on deck, so this morning they would use the secondary control panel in the catapult machinery spaces.
“What’s that smell?” one of them asked, sniffing loudly.
“I was sick over there behind the panel,” Kowalski said.
“Oh.”
“Jesus, Ski, you oughta …”
“Yeah.”
“Boy, we’re gonna get those bastards,” one of the greenshirted troopers said and giggled nervously.
“Yeah, we’ll teach ’em not to fuck with the Uncle Sugar Navy,” Pak agreed.
“Them A-rabs is gonna get an edufuckation,” enthused the greenie known as the Russian.
“You guys go below,” Kowalski said. “Pak, you man the panel in the control room. Don’t do nothing until I say, then do exactly what I say. Understand?”
“Hey Ski, can I stay here and watch?” the first greenie asked, elevating his head for another look around. “This is gonna be so good that—”
“Everyone below. You can watch on the monitor down there if it’s working.”
“Aaaw …” They trooped out and dogged the watertight door tightly behind them, leaving Kowalski alone in the darkness with his hangover.
* * *
It was the sound of the helicopter engines coming to life that first alerted Jake Grafton. Their low moan rose slowly in pitch until the fuel-air mixture ignited, then it spooled up quickly to a whining howl. When the RPMs were at idle, the main and tail rotors began to turn. The sentries on the deck remained at their posts.
Jake moved until he could see past the noses of the Hawkeyes abeam the island into the parked rows of planes on the bow, the “bow pack.” Yes. There was someone! Pushing a weapon on a bomb cart. A sentry was with him. And there comes another.
“Archer?”
“Yessir.”
“Take a look.” The senior chief moved up beside Jake and peered through the gap between an F-14 mainmount and A-6 belly tank that Jake was using.
“There’s the admiral,” Archer said. Now Jake saw him too, in his whites with his hands bound behind him, walking with three other people.
* * *
Kowalski heard the engines of the choppers winding up and donned the sound-powered headset. He adjusted it over his ears and pulled the mike to his lips. “You there, Pak?”
“Yo, Ski. I’m ready.”
“Don’t do nothing until I tell you. But stay ready. These guys are starting their engines. Let me stick my head up for a look-see.” He eased his eyes up to the lower edge of the bulletproof glass. The sentries were no longer lying down; they were milling around smartly. He looked at the last helicopter in line, the one sitting atop the number-four JBD. He could just see the pilot and copilot in the cockpit. Not navy pilots, that’s for sure — no naval aviator in his right mind would set one of those eggbeaters down on top of a JBD. Their tough luck.
“What d’ya see?” Pak’s voice in his ears.
“A bad accident about to happen. Now keep your ears open and your mouth shut.”
* * *
The fire-crew bosun watched the helicopters start their engines on the television monitor. He picked up the cards on the desk that he had been using to play solitaire and carefully placed them in their box and put the box in the upper left-hand drawer, right were it belonged. You learned that in the navy, if you learned nothing else — everything in its place.
He stood and stretched, his eyes on the monitor. A figure in white came into the lower right corner of the picture, accompanied by two men, one in khaki and one in sailor’s dungarees. There was a fat man in civilian clothes and a figure that looked like a woman. The bosun stepped forward, closer to the screen.
His men crowded around. “Ain’t that the admiral?” “Jesus, I think it is.” “What is going on?” “Beats the living shit outta me, man.” “They never tell us nothing.”
“What are those things on them dollys?”
The men stood right under the television, as close as they could get, and stared up at the screen. “Holy … Those things are nukes.”
“You guys sit down.” The bosun watched as they took seats on the couch with the stuffing coming out and on the folding chairs. He took down the key to the truck from the hook near the door. “You people stay here.”
“I’m going with you, Bosun,” the first-class said.
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