Admiral Dunsmore interrupted. “Thank you, Arnold. I am sure the President would prefer now to get into his own agenda, since we are all agreed that for the purposes of public announcement, this was an accident. I do not want anyone to forget that.”
“Actually, Scott,” said the President, “I am finding this all very instructive. If there are any technical points you think should be aired, please go ahead. For the moment, I would like you to run the meeting as you think fit.”
“Okay, sir. Anyone else have anything relevant to this meeting regarding procedures and actions on the ships?”
Admiral Dunsmore’s deputy, Admiral Freddy Roberts, had thus far been silent. But now he spoke up. “Sir, just this…I have been glancing through the list of radar contacts picked up that day, and transmitted on the link, as laid out in Captain Barry’s report. There were a total of fifteen, some of ’em big fish, maybe flocks of birds. Five of ’em from one ship, four from another. But there was nothing else from Hayler.
“Ships which report everything have historically jumpy ops rooms. Nothing wrong with that. Better safe than sorry. But I know the ASWO in Hayler, real good man, very experienced, Lieutenant Commander Chuck Freeburg. The point is, he thought it was something. That’s why he mentioned it and put a report on the link. I think we should definitely assume there was something. Chuck’s a very unjumpy guy.”
“Okay, Freddy. Thank you. Mr. President, I am, of course, bearing in mind that we are announcing only an accident. But, on the other theory, there is just one other point I would like Admiral Roberts to put forward, and it has to do with the time and weather.”
“Okay, sir. As you know I served some time out there myself in a destroyer, and I can tell you that by the end of June, the southwestern monsoon is beginning to sweep in from the African coast and throughout July and August you get a lot of real sticky weather conditions in the northern Indian Ocean and the Arabian Sea.
“There’s often rain, and a dense, warm sea mist being carried along on a strange kind of wind, always feels too hot, but plays hell with the visibility, and pulls up a heavy sea.
“Now if I was going to take out an American warship I’d definitely do it in July or August. If I was a real fundamentalist who hated the U.S.A., I’d probably go for the Fourth of July. In my view they were four days late.
“But their timing was otherwise perfect. Dark falls quickly in the Middle East—by around six-thirty in the evening. The submarine would have come in close then, checking on the carrier every twenty minutes, at periscope depth, for maybe two hours. At around eight-thirty they were in position, waiting off her starboard bow.
“At nine o’clock local, we know they struck. At this time they were aware that there were still eight or nine hours of pitch-black darkness to come, making pursuit out of the question, ’specially with the predictable fog. Perfection makes me nervous. And these guys, whoever the hell they are, got a lot of things dead right.”
The President was thoughtful. “I would like someone to fill me in on exactly why the accident theory is so hard for an expert to accept. Admiral Morgan…?”
“We’re back to Commander Baldridge on that. Bill, run the technology past the President, would you?”
“Sir, let me start by assuming you have only limited knowledge of how a nuclear warhead works. Basically we are dealing with two hunks of radioactive material, probably uranium 235. Like all metals this is made up of atoms—this is a very little guy, about one four-hundredth of a millionth of an inch in diameter, which operates like a tiny solar system. Its core is the nucleus, made up of neutrons and protons. It is this nucleus which concerns us.
“The trick is to upset the basic balance of the atom’s nucleus, and somehow split it. We do it by helping extra neutrons to hit the nucleus which causes the whole thing to become unstable, and start to split apart. In turn, this generates energy, releasing more neutrons to bombard all the other nuclei, starting off a lethal chain reaction, with the bombardment process occurring 400 million million times in a split second.
“While all this is happening, the whole thing is being held together by the mechanism of the trigger, just long enough for a massive buildup of energy, and then a gigantic explosion.
“We achieve this in a warhead by placing two hunks of highly radioactive uranium 235 a safe distance apart on the edges of the warhead. The idea is merely to slam them together with sufficient force to hold the material together in one super critical piece, while the chain reaction goes completely and explosively out of control.
“To do this we have two explosive charges which must be detonated at precisely the same time, accurate to within one-thousandth of a second, in order to slam both hunks of uranium into head-on collision with each other, with precise force. If even one of the charges does not explode on time, or fails to explode correctly, the warhead will simply not function. The electronic impulse must activate the explosive on both sides, at the exact same moment. One half hitting the other is not sufficient for full force. They must be blasted into each other precisely as designed.
“There is a lot of room for error here, and the trigger device is very delicate. It must be set and activated with absolute precision. The radioactive material must be fabricated and assembled with immense care.
“You guys really think all this happens by some kind of a fluke…an accident…? Forget it. It could not, and did not, happen.”
“Thank you, Commander,” said the President. “I’m grateful for the explanation. Nonetheless, I know that everyone here understands the gravity of the implications. We will not be deviating in any way from the accident theory. Neither, of course, would any other nation in our position.”
For a moment, the great man hesitated, then he looked up and half-smiled. “It’s a funny thing, but from the moment Bill here mentioned he thought we’d been hit, I’d had it in my mind that there was some kind of an enemy submarine stalking our giant carrier and finally getting to the right range for the torpedo shot. But it’s not like that at all, is it?”
“Nossir,” said Admiral Morgan. “He did not do it like that. That submarine commander knew the two-hundred-mile by two-hundred-mile area of ops for the carrier. He got in there while she was far away—and then he just waited and waited…for the carrier to come to him…running silently at his lowest speed…with all the time in the world to set up and make his one shot count. A cool professional approach. I guess you’d call it military terrorism, an ambush on the grandest possible scale.”
“Yeah, I guess you would,” replied the President. “And right now there is only one thing that really matters. We must make someone pay…someone, somewhere, is going to pay a terrible price. The people of this nation did not elect me to preside over the destruction of the Navy—at the hand of some fanatic.
“If it should come down to two, or even three, suspects…I’ll hit the whole lot of them before I’ll let anyone get away with it.”
He glanced up at Admiral Dunsmore, who seemed to be shaking his head. “Scott? You have some kind of a moral problem with that?” the President said.
“Absolutely not, sir. I was just thinking about the irony of the situation—Admiral Chester Nimitz was the master of the trap. At Midway, he ordered the American fleet to wait and wait for Yamamoto’s carriers to come to us—and then we struck, hard and fast, sank four of them with dive bombers from right off the decks of the Enterprise. Now, all these years later, we may have lost the finest carrier of the Nimitz Class, sailing in the name of the great man, in precisely the same way, ambushed by a stealthy enemy.”
“Hmmm,” murmured the President. “We lost a carrier, too, didn’t we, at Midway?”
“Well, sir, the Yorktown was severely bombed and burned, but she survived the onslaught.”
“Oh, I thought she sank.”
“She did, sir, but that was three days later.”
“More bombs?”
“No, sir. They got her with a submarine.”
5
1900 Wednesday, July 10.
THE PRESIDENTIAL PARTY ENTERED THE PRIVATE ELEVATOR used by the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs and descended to the Pentagon garage accompanied by two U.S. Marine guards and two Secret Service agents. The other Navy brass remained in conference, except for Bill Baldridge, who arrived in the garage four minutes later. He reached the Mustang just as the three-car White House motorcade moved off through the lines of parked vehicles toward the bright light of the entrance.
As the big limousines swept past, Lieutenant Commander Baldridge stood back and saluted his Commander-in-Chief. The President, sitting alone in the rear seat, involuntarily returned the salute. And he glanced back at the Kansas officer, who was still standing quite still, a lonely, defiant figure among a thousand cars. “So long, Bill,” he muttered. “God go with you…and me.”
It was a little after seven-thirty in the evening when Bill finally left Washington and set off for Virginia, recrossing the Potomac and heading south along the west bank of the river. The traffic was still heavy and it took him thirty minutes to cover the sixteen miles to the Mount Vernon turnoff.
In another dozen miles he ducked left off the parkway onto a small country road, and in the glow of the July sunset he sped through a woodland drive into the precincts of a majestic, white-columned colonial house, built on a bluff overlooking the upper reaches of the Potomac estuary, with views across to the heights on the Maryland shore. By any standard, it was a spectacular piece of property, and it had taken the entire proceeds from the sale of one of the grandest houses on Boston’s Beacon Hill to buy it. The pity was, its owner now had a job of such magnitude, his time here was very limited. These days he lived almost exclusively in the official residence in the Washington Navy Yard, with its electronic security, and staff. But never a day passed without the great man thinking wistfully of this place.
A U.S. Navy guard, on duty in the foyer, opened the huge front door for Bill, took his bag, and led him into a high, bright summery room full of joyous, rose-patterned English chintz. But the slim, blond fifty-fiveish lady who advanced toward him wore a plain dark green silk sheath dress, with a single strand of pearls. Her smile seemed tired, and she held out her arms to him as if welcoming a little boy. Suddenly, the iron-clad discipline he had exercised for two entire days fell from him as a dark mantle, and he rested his head on her shoulder and wept uncontrollably. “Darling Billy,” she whispered. “I’m so very, very sorry.”
It took him several minutes to regain his composure, and when he did he just kept repeating over and over, “Jesus, Grace…It just seems so unfair…so goddamned unfair…why Jack…why the hell did it have to be Jack…?”
At that moment, Grace’s husband entered the room carrying a small silver tray and three glasses of Scotch and club soda. He handed a glass to his wife, selected one for himself, and gave one to their guest. Then he put his arm around Bill Baldridge’s shoulder and said gently, “I thought you might need this, Billy. You’ve been very, very brave.”
“Thanks, Pops,” said the lieutenant commander to Admiral Scott Dunsmore.
The three of them sat in easy companionable silence; three old friends, bound together during the long years of the early nineties when everyone had hoped Bill would marry the tall, fair-haired Elizabeth Dunsmore, the light of her father’s life.
Their seven-year affair had been fraught with all of the problems of Navy romances—mostly the long absences by the young officer, especially while Bill was trying not only to become a submarine commander but also to obtain his doctorate.
The U.S. Navy is traditionally cooperative when any of its more promising officers seeks the highest academic qualifications. But for Elizabeth, who was only a couple of years younger than her fiancé, it meant that Bill was either groping around the bottom of the Atlantic Ocean, or sitting behind a twelve-foot-high pile of books in a granite-walled library in Boston.
When he occasionally broke free, she would invariably apply for a few days’ leave of absence from her Washington law firm, and accompany him to Kansas, where they would spend days riding the endless horizons of the Baldridge ranch. From time to time, the admiral would join them. He and Bill’s father would go out shooting quail together, attend cattle auctions, and drink beer out on the veranda. They had all been together when old Tom Baldridge had died after a short, brutal bout with cancer. They had all attended Jack’s wedding, and variously been together through the normal family triumphs and disasters.
When Elizabeth Dunsmore had suddenly announced five years previously that she had tired of waiting around for her sailor-cowboy, and was marrying a fellow Georgetown lawyer, the members of both families were saddened beyond words. Bill’s mother pleaded with her, Grace pleaded with her, Admiral Dunsmore pleaded with her, and Jack Baldridge pleaded with her. Bill did not plead with her, neither did he offer to marry her. He told everyone he guessed she knew her own mind. To Jack he confided that she’d never be happy with anyone except him. Which caused Bill’s big brother to get right back on the phone to Grace and tell her there was hope after all.
But in truth there was none. Bill Baldridge was not about to make the grand commitment. Elizabeth married her attorney, and Jack ended up by calling Bill a “pure-bred country asshole.” And he and his wife and Grace Dunsmore spent many a long dinner in Washington and San Diego bemoaning the absurdities of the youngest of the Baldridge sons.
But the family ties between the Dunsmores and the Baldridges remained strong. These days, the admiral still made the journey out to Kansas and shot quail with Jack and Bill, while Grace took long, leisurely horse rides through the big country with various Baldridge sisters and cousins.
Inside the U.S. Navy, however, the well-established, rigid standards of protocol and seniority remained unbroken. Bill called Admiral Dunsmore “Sir” or “Admiral” on all occasions. The admiral addressed him as “Bill” extremely rarely. But their friendship was so long and so lasting that the Chief of Naval Operations never batted an eyelid when the lieutenant commander called him “Pops” in the intimacy of either of the family homes.
And now the three of them sat quietly in this great house overlooking the Potomac, united in a shared grief over the loss of Captain Jack Baldridge, beloved brother to Bill, and beloved friend and surrogate brother to the admiral and to Grace. The captain had been such a huge presence in all of their lives because he was, although only the second son of Tom, the assumed head of the family. The eldest brother, Ray, who had never left the ranch and was married with four children, took it for granted that one day Jack would return from the high seas and take on the responsibility for the sprawling cattle empire.
Had he lived, Jack would have become the fourth Baldridge in as many generations to have served as an officer in the U.S. Navy and returned to run the complicated financial operation of a huge Kansas ranch. As old Tom had once announced, “None of us owns this place. We have just been given its custody, for each of our life-times. And like my great-grandfather, and my grandfather, I’m designating the future head of the corporation. And that’s obviously gonna be Jack. So don’t no one think of discussing it anymore.”
No one ever did. And outside the family, no one would ever quite comprehend the shocking sense of loss all of them now felt. And no one would ever feel Bill Baldridge’s sense of desolation quite like Grace Dunsmore.
They sipped their Scotch in silence for a while, until finally the phone rang in the hall and Grace went to answer it. She was just gone for a few minutes, and when she returned said, “It’s Elizabeth, and she wants to speak to you, Billy. You don’t have to, if you don’t feel like it.”
“Oh no, that’s okay, I’ll be happy to speak to her.” He was gone for some time, and was smiling when he returned. “She just wanted to talk about Jack for a while,” he said. “Aside from that she seems fine.” He did not of course report her parting words: “Good-bye, Billy. I love you, and that’s never going to change.” Before he could reply, she had put down the phone. Bill Bal
dridge’s smile was the smile of a man who had been required to make no commitment.
Grace Dunsmore’s smile was that of a mother who had guessed anyway precisely what her beautiful headstrong daughter had said. But now she excused herself, explaining that there was a light supper for the two men in the admiral’s study, a decanter of Johnnie Walker Black Label, a decanter of Château Haut-Brion, and half a decanter of port. “Select your poison,” she smiled, leaving them to it for the rest of the evening.
“Well, Billy, you tell me what’s on your mind. As if I don’t know.”
“Can I assume you agree with me that our carrier got hit? No accident. No sabotage,” Baldridge asked.
“Assuming you understand that this conversation, as with all of our private conversations, goes no further than these four walls.”
“Of course.”
“I know the carrier got hit. I knew it got hit about an hour before you nearly gave the President a heart attack on E Ring the other night. There’s no other explanation, as you well know. But I may not say so except in deadly private, and the President may never say so, whatever he thinks. But he knows, make no mistake about that. So does every member of the Navy High Command. We all know, and it happens to suit everyone real well for you to be the eager young officer saying it. Your opinions, advice, and judgments are all useful, but not irreplaceable, young Bill, so don’t get too pleased with yourself.
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