Firespill

by Ian Slater

  Jean’s expression told the President that she couldn’t care less about the press. “Mr. President, they’re still in grave danger. They have a long way to go and the fire’s still over them. It’s spread much further east than we thought.”

  The President reached for his chair. “Didn’t they recharge when they surfaced?”

  “Not enough time, sir. The fire-free zone was cut in two. They had to get out very quickly. Besides, they have a fuel leak.” Jean handed him a cable from Canadian Defense Forces Pacific Command requesting help in extricating the sub.

  The President poured a cup of ice-cold water, drank it in one gulp, crushed the paper container, and still gripping it, asked, “You mean they grabbed air only—no battery recharge at all?”

  “That’s right, sir.”

  “Where are they now?”

  Henricks used the long pointer to indicate the position on the map.

  “What have we got on the way?” asked the President in a gloomy voice.

  Henricks wearily flicked over a file. “U.S.S. Finguard. A cruiser—nonnuclear.”

  “Can she help them?”

  “No, sir. She can only stand by on the perimeter. As long as that fire bums, we can’t do a thing.”

  There was a long pause as the President looked slowly about the Operations Room, sensing the air of exhaustion and defeat. Only Oster, pulling out another long cigar, looked fresh and relatively unconcerned. Sutherland stood up and went to the map with his hands on his hips and his head bowed in thought. The digital clocks continued their silent race.

  The general tore the wrapper from the Tabacalera, squeezed the cellophane into a tight ball, aimed it carefully like a missile, tossed it across the room, and watched it drop into the center of a wastebasket overflowing with spaghetti-piled reams of telex tape. With the unabashed satisfaction of a connoisseur, he rolled the olive green cigar between his lips, lit it, and blew out a long stream of smoke. His aide, the air force colonel, knew that the Bomber was thinking hard. The general paced several times up and down the length of the long mahogany table, the tip of his cigar brightening and dimming regularly. Then he looked up in a haze of smoke that rose in a veil across the world map. “Jean, how long does the sub have?”

  “At the time of rescue, Canadian Command at Esquimalt reported it had two hours’ battery power remaining. That’s traveling at fifteen knots.” Jean glanced at her watch. “But she’s been under way for fourteen minutes now. One hour and forty-six minutes left.”

  Deftly flicking open a pair of dividers, the general measured off the distance that the sub would have to go to break out. He frowned. “At that rate she’d barely make thirty miles, and there’s over a hundred miles to go before she’d clear the fire with even a minimal degree of safety.” He put down the dividers; they could tell him no more than he already knew. “She’s got no chance as it is.”

  Sutherland, desperate for the least sign of hope, said without conviction, “They have got air, though. They could stay down and breathe.” His voice trailed off lamely. “Couldn’t they?”

  Jean Roche’s reply was not encouraging. “You might call it air. It’s full of fumes. But the main problem is that they haven’t enough spare power to cool the ship, which means they can’t keep the air temperature down to a safe level.” Jean picked up the message that had come in from Canadian Pacific Command. “The real trouble comes when the batteries go out completely. And this last report from Esquimalt confirms that all batteries will be dead by 2249 their time—0149 our time. Without any power to cool the sub even a little, the temperature will soar.”

  “Soar!” grunted the general. “In that humidity, it’ll kill them. Must be damn near boiling inside that sub right now.”

  Stunned by what he’d just heard, his hopes suddenly demolished, the President hardly heard Jean agree with Oster and inform the general that Esquimalt had reported that without proper cooling, the heat from the electrical systems alone would already be pushing the temperature in the sub to over 120 degrees Fahrenheit.

  Oster looked morosely at the map. “If the calm area was cut in two by fire, how in hell did that sub get the boat out?” he asked.

  Jean’s voice was beginning to sound hoarse from fatigue. “Apparently it blew a gap in the fire wall, General.”

  “Torpedoes?”

  “Yes.”

  The general grunted and began to pace again, his cigar bobbing from one corner of his mouth to the other with an alarming rapidity. The colonel was intrigued; this was one of the general’s “bombing” moods if ever he’d seen one. Suddenly the general stopped, the cigar abruptly stilled and sticking out defiantly like a small cannon. “Mr. President!”

  Soon the two men were huddled over one of the smaller tables, where the three-dimensional satellite pictures of the fire had been assembled. Jean Roche heard Oster say, “It wouldn’t have worked with the fishing boat, but it just might work out for the sub.” She lost the rest of the conversation amid the rustle of photos being moved as the general hastened to explain his idea.

  Sutherland listened intently, nodding, his face flushed, his excitement communicating itself to everyone in the Special Operations Room. Finally he stood up, beaming, and slapped the general on the back. Interesting? By God, Arnold, it’s brilliant, that’s what it is! We’ll go to war with the son of a bitch.” The President signaled to Henricks. “Bob, get me Strategic Air Command—Bombers.”

  The aide hesitated as his hand rested on the red phone. “Nuclear Wing, Mr. President?”

  “Christ, no—not the B-1’s. We’re not starting a nuclear war. I want the largest conventional bomb-loaded carriers we’ve got on standby. The B-52’s. Right, General?”

  Oster blew out a short puff of smoke. “Sure as hell is, Mr. President,” he answered with obvious pride. “Still the most versatile bombers we’ve got—carry any damn thing—A-bombs to hand grenades.”

  “Good,” said the President. “Where’s the nearest conventional wing base?”

  Henricks hurriedly leafed through the computerized list of bases. But Oster, flicking off a long ash and stabbing his cigar towards the map, already had the answer. “Closest is Freeth Air Base in Alaska, between Valdez and Cordova, four hundred miles northwest of the spill. But we’d better hurry. We’re getting damn close to the wire—ninety minutes, to be exact.”

  The president motioned urgently to Henricks. “Right. Bob, get me Strategic Air Command Headquarters at Offutt, Nebraska. I want to speak to the commander, Conventional Weapons Wing.”

  After he had explained the general’s plan, Sutherland was surprised to see that it had failed to excite much interest among his aides, but his exasperation with the lack of any alternative spurred him on. Henricks put their doubts into words. “We’d need an awful lot of conventional bombs.”

  Sutherland’s eyes moved slowly from aide to aide, and with acidic understatement he observed, “If there’s one commodity this office has available upon request, it is exactly that. We have some left over from Vietnam, you might remember. Besides,” he added in a buoyant tone, “we might even be able to stop the whole fire before it hits the U.S. and Canadian coasts. If this mission works, we’ll send in every B-52 we have.”

  Oster’s eyebrows lowered, warning the aides to back off—not that he was afraid of criticism, but he, better than anyone in the room, understood how deeply troubled his friend was, and he saw that the time had come to protect him. He knew that the almost boyish enthusiasm with which the President had greeted the plan was in a reality a measure of his deep despair, a signal that the adrenaline was racing—that the President was ready to grasp at anything in a final frantic effort to save the woman he loved.

  Driven by his anxiety, Sutherland returned to the wall map. Its rows of blinking lights, now programmed to indicate SAC’s conventional bomber air bases, stared down on him. The plan was a long shot. He knew it and the general knew it. It was the longest shot they’d ever played together, but now it was the only one they had
to play. Besides, their luck had held so far. Maybe it would keep on holding. Maybe.

  Eighteen

  In Vietnam at age thirty-four, Si Johnson, a reticent, slightly built New Englander, hadn’t been the top navigator in the 501 Bombardment Group, but he had been among the best. When he came home from Nam, nobody was surprised when he was made navigator in Ebony I, the lead B-52 in the Seventeenth Conventional Bomb Wing, based at Freeth Field in Alaska.

  Lately in his spare time he had taken to playing tennis, but without professional coaching the joy of the game was eluding him. Like most things he had tried since returning from Southeast Asia, he was about to give it up after three or four months. His room at home, where he spent his leave with his divorced and aging mother, looked like a warehouse of brand-new sports and hobby equipment scattered amid a photo gallery of old girl friends. His mother had thoroughly disapproved of them all, and in time they had all been discarded or had left. A few of them had left sooner than most when they discovered that instead of being a flyer and an adventurer full of war stories (which they publicly abhorred and silently enjoyed), Si Johnson away from his job was in fact a recluse. The only reason he had attracted them in the first place was that he’d impressed them as being the most thoughtful and best-mannered man on the base.

  Because he was so quiet and reserved, it had always been difficult for anyone to tell when Si was unhappy. People usually thought he was just habitually shy.

  On the evening of September 22, his tennis game was going particularly badly; in fact, it was hardly going at all. He had double-faulted all his services in the first game, and his returns were plopping impotently into the net. He blamed the neon lights which had recently been installed in the indoor court in downtown Freeth. But his ebullient partner and neighbor, Len Tresser, an accountant, wasn’t so sure. During a break before the third game, Tresser enthusiastically began analyzing the situation. He loved to work on failures; it gave him the same satisfaction as balancing ill-kept ledgers.

  “You seem to be hesitating a lot, Si—just as you’re about to hit the ball.”

  Si, who at five five was dwarfed by the taller Tresser, said nothing; he just shrugged momentarily and sat down on the bench, rewinding the elastic grip on his new Slazenger.

  “What I mean, Si, is you—well, you’re pulling back all the time instead of going right in to meet the ball. Know what I mean?”

  Had Tresser been more perceptive, he would have noticed that Si either didn’t want his mistakes pointed out or wasn’t listening. But he pressed on eagerly, determined to correct his opponent’s errors. He began demonstrating what he called his Ken Rosewall forehand. “You have to go to the ball

  Si—like this—see? Step into it.” By way of demonstration, Tresser, his back towards Si, stepped forward in an exaggerated motion, his left foot leading. He swung low at an imaginary ball. “See—left foot first, racket already back, watch the ball, watch the ball—watch the ball—follow—through!”

  Si was looking down at the handle of his racket. Tresser babbled on, reveling in the sound of his own voice. “Backhand, now. Right foot forward—unless you’re a southpaw, of course—ha!—on the ball of the foot—watch the ball, watch the ball—follow—through! It’s amazing the number of people who fail to follow through. They do everything else right, but they boo-boo on the follow-through. They think it’s all finished on impact. Shoot—that’s only half the game.”

  Si raised his head. For some reason he did not understand, his right arm and leg began trembling. He looked up blankly. “Pardon?”

  Tresser turned around. “I said you’ve got to follow through.”

  “Oh.”

  “You see, Si, I’ve been watching you. To put it quite frankly, old son, your game has no ketchup on it. Right?”

  “Ketchup?”

  “Right. No zing—no pizazz.”

  Tresser at last saw that none of this was sinking in. “Dullsville!” he said, dropping his arms down and twirling about like a demented baboon. His shadow passed in front of Johnson, who looked up, reacting to the change in light.

  “It’s your eyes,” Tresser went on cheerfully.

  “No!” said Johnson with uncharacteristic finality. “No, it’s these lights. It’s not me.”

  “No, it’s your eyes,” repeated Tresser. “You’re not watching the ball close enough. I think—hey, what’s wrong with your arm? It’s shaking like a scared rabbit.”

  “What? Oh, nothing, just sitting on a nerve I guess.” Si halfheartedly got up from the bench and made his way tiredly to the base line. “You ready?” he asked.

  “Sure am. Fit as a fiddle.”

  It was Tresser’s service. There was a sharp twack as the ball sped through the air, kicked up the line dust in Si’s court, and neatly passed him.

  “Fifteen-love!” yelled Tresser, thrilled by his performance. He moved across to the backhand court, anxious to ace Si again.

  By the time he got back to barracks at Freeth at about nine-thirty that night, Si Johnson was resolved to try a new sport, not because he had been soundly thrashed—he didn’t care whether he lost or won—but because the game was starting to bore him. Maybe he would try squash. Some of the other guys in the wing had said that you got the feel of squash much quicker and that for the same amount of time you could keep much fitter. The question of fitness, indeed the idea of sports in general, wouldn’t have mattered to Johnson except that next month the whole wing would have to undergo the detailed yearly physical. Burke, the captain of Ebony I and leader of the wing, had said he would have any man who was overweight grounded until he lost the additional poundage. It wasn’t that Si Johnson liked flying so much that grounding would have added to his general apathy, but at least he was occupied while he was in the air.

  As he showered, Johnson let the water pound on the back of his neck to relieve the headache that he believed the new lights at the court had given him. His leg was still shaking, but the trembling in his arm had largely subsided. He glanced at his watch. It was 9:40. At around a quarter to ten Stokely, the front gunner in Ebony I, would come with the jeep to collect him and the rest of the three-plane Ebony group and take them to the officers’ mess for the surprise birthday party that the nine-plane wing was about to spring on Noel Burke. At forty, Burke was considered almost a grandfather by the younger members of the Seventeenth.

  Si didn’t want to go to the party. He’d given up parties. He had nothing against the captain, but the drinks made him sick now and the talk was boring. He’d heard it all before: the same jokes, usually about prostitutes and homosexuals, in that order, and the tale of near escapes, in bedrooms and in bombers. And of course they still talked about Vietnam. They had loved Vietnam.

  No matter what the protesting veterans in Washington said, the air force had loved Vietnam. It was easy enough to understand; you never had to see a face you killed, as the ground forces did. Most of the time you just dropped the load on some beautiful lettuce green and rust red papier-mâche map with all the hills in fascinating relief and all the people invisible. You just…

  The pounding in his head got worse, spreading until it was a band of pain clamped to his temples. He turned the hot water off and the cold on full. While the rest of his body shivered from the shock the pain reluctantly withdrew, retreating low into his neck, where it continued to stab him but where it was more tolerable. He would mention the headaches to the doctor at the medical. Perhaps a flight would do him good. It was the fall, the sudden change in humidity, not the new lights, that was causing the pain. A more rarefied atmosphere might do him some good.

  As he reluctantly pulled on a pair of long black woolen socks his mother had knitted him for the coming Alaskan winter, the jeep screamed to a stop and Stokely’s footsteps pounded outside the door. Simultaneously he heard the penetrating blast of the emergency takeoff alarm. Automatically he got up, opened the khaki green locker, and reached in for his flying suit.

  “Party’s off, Si.” It was Stokely, fr
amed by the doorway and practically exploding with excitement.

  “Why?” asked Johnson, tom between relief that the celebration would not take place and apprehension about whatever it was that had preempted it.

  “We’re up tonight—that’s why. Wild black yonder.”

  Si zipped down the elasticized legs. “Mideast?” he asked.

  “What—no, no. Nothing like that. It’s this frappin’ great fire that’s searin’ the pants off of everybody. Something to do with a rescue. We’re gonna have some fun. Some egg time at last—just in time. All this quiet was gettin’ on my nerves.”

  Johnson carefully closed his locker and spun the combination lock drum.

  “Bombs?”

  “Yes, sir. Grade B—conventional, but eggs all the same. You’re gonna get a chance to show that new boy how good you are, eh? Bang! Right on target. Christ, it’ll be like Nam.”

  Outside, Johnson saw that the jeep was being driven by Peters, the recently arrived replacement radar operator for Ebony I. Si turned to Stokely. “Sure it isn’t just a practice emergency run?”

  “No, Daddy, this is for real. They’re setting up special briefing boards in the ops room.”

  Peters nodded to Si with some deference. Fresh out of training school, he was still in awe of the Vietnam veterans. “Evening, sir.”

  “Huh—oh, hi.”

  Stokely put his arm around Si, and as the jeep started off down towards base center, he called over to Peters, “Hey, kid, it’s your lucky night. You’re flying with the crème de la crème. Right, Si?”

  Si ignored him. The jeep pulled up at another hut, collected the electronics warfare officer for the lead bomber, and then went on to the briefing hall, into which men were filing as quietly as the swishing flying suits would allow them. The electronics expert remarked to Si. “Hey, I was there when the message came through. Capt’n Burke says the President himself asked for us. Reckon only the conventional wing can handle it.”