Firespill

by Ian Slater

  “Naturally,” added Stokely in a jocular mood. “We’re fast and sure—right, guys?”

  “Right,” answered Peters, who was reveling in the easy camaraderie. It was already making him feel right at home. Si Johnson said nothing. His right arm and leg were starting to tremble again, and the veins on the right side of his head felt tight and swollen. He resolved to exercise more to work whatever it was out of his system.

  Twelve hundred miles to the south and five hundred miles southeast of the firespill, the moon’s rays slipped through a break in the gathering stratus cloud over southern British Columbia and turned the surface of Harrison Lake from black to silver. In the hotel built around the hot springs on the south shore, guests were preparing for bed, though not necessarily for sleep.

  Luxuriating in the deep, autumn-colored carpet and admiring herself in the gilded full-length mirror, Fran Lambrecker sprayed herself liberally with Chanel cologne, not caring whether it dampened the transparent red negligee that swept and clung about her. Indulging her rich-girl fantasies, she moved her head this way and that, opening and pouting her red lips in what she imagined would be alluring and provocative poses for some future lover. She could have done with less perfume, but Morgan liked the smell; he said it turned him on. Everything, it seemed, turned Morgan on, so much so that she was growing a little tired of his indiscriminate lust. He hung around her every waking moment like a stray dog around a bitch in heat, as if he had to fulfill a quota before he’d consider the money for the hotel well spent. But she put up with it. He wasn’t a bad sort, she thought. Maybe he did drink too much, but at least he never took himself too seriously, and in bed he was inventive in a clumsy sort of way. And whatever else, he loved fun.

  She rarely thought of her husband these days. The three months they had been apart had finally convinced her that she wouldn’t see him anymore. She didn’t hate him—probably she never really had—but she had resented him. She had been constantly angry with him for his refusal to socialize, to “go out on the town” as she called it. After two years of marriage she had felt like a prisoner, with the sameness of each housebound day dragging on interminably. Now she knew she’d married too early—if she was ever meant to marry at all. Fran’s idea of a full life was to be always “doing different things,” which mostly seemed to mean to be sleeping with different men, as Lambrecker had suspected and Morgan was about to discover.

  At the memory of her early romance with Lambrecker, her mouth twisted with disgust. She had been another woman then. She guessed it had all had something to do with the uniform; she had always found men in uniform attractive. Even Morgan, whose beer belly hung over his belt like a distended wine sack, looked nice in his “walking out” greens.

  She looked out the window at the broad, moonlit lake, and to the west among the tall, dark pines she could see a long spiral of vapor escaping from the bubbling hot springs. It reminded her of a country song she had heard—something about love vanishing like steam from a cup of coffee. For her attraction for her husband had long gone. Once she had thought he was really romantic, but since then she had felt nothing, not even the last time he came home on leave. She was honest enough to hold herself largely responsible for what had happened to them. She had read in some women’s magazine that when couples finally reached the point of breaking up, they often discovered that despite all the problems, they really felt more for each other than they had believed. Fran knew that this wasn’t the case with them. Not with her, anyway. She had decided that she would tell him when he returned—but not to his face. He would go wild if she did that. Instead she would write him a letter. She hated writing letters, but she would keep it simple. Maybe it would be best to sign off “Love, Fran”—something nice, she thought.

  Morgan had difficulty getting through the door, loaded down as he was with bottles of ginger ale, collins mix, and a king-sized bag of crushed ice in his determined effort to beat the cost of room service.

  “My God!” Fran laughed. “What have you got?”

  When he saw that Fran had changed into the negligee he had insisted on buying her from the hotel boutique, Morgan’s eyes bulged. “Geez,” he said, and began putting the bottles down with such haste that he dropped the ice.

  “You’re a gorilla,” she protested gaily as he dragged her off the soft stool onto the deep shag. He went into a crouch position, then, grunting and letting his arms hang apelike, he proceeded to scratch his armpit in the manner of a baboon

  She laughed aloud and threw her nightdress open. “Come on,” she said.

  As he fumbled for the dresser light, she was happy that she did not feel at all guilty about what she was doing. She was enjoying it. She wished Lambrecker would stay away forever.

  She put her arms around Morgan’s neck as he closed his eyes and buried his head in the rug, already starting to grunt. But Fran’s eyes stayed open in the darkness, and fear began to grow cold about her. She realized that all this time, ever since he had slammed the door three months ago, she had been acting as if Lambrecker were dead. Even when she had planned the final note to him a little while ago, she had composed it as if he would simply read it and everything between them would stop, just like that. But suddenly she remembered that the submarine was on its way back. What would he do when he found out—when he came home? He would probably threaten to kill her. He might smash into her with his fist…

  With an effort, she closed her eyes and pulled hard at Morgan.

  Nineteen

  The roar of the bombers was deafening, each of the seventy-two Pratt and Whitney engines screaming in the darkness, gathering its twenty thousand pounds of thrust, as the nine B-52’s formed themselves into the three cells designated Ebony, Gold, and Purple, of three planes each, which together made up the wave.

  One by one the bombers began “crabbing it,” sliding down the runway with their wheels turned at an angle into the crosswind. Quickly gathering speed, they thundered down the tarmac, each one rising into the night in a shattering crescendo that shook every window on the base.

  Once airborne, Noel Burke, the aircraft commander of the lead bomber, Ebony I, and so commander of the wave, looked about him at the various pinpoints of the bombers’ takeoff lights to check the formation. The bomber to his left, number two of his cell, still had Southeast Asian combat markings—a khaki camouflage pattern on top and its belly painted pitch black to terrify civilian populations during daylight raids. It was a change, thought Burke, to be on a mission of mercy.

  It was 2200 hours Pacific Time, and Si Johnson computed that the wave, traveling at six hundred miles per hour one thousand feet above the sea, ready for low bombing, would arrive at the sub site in thirty-seven minutes, at 2238, give or take a few minutes for possible change in wind speed due to the buildup of the southbound Arctic front. And they would also have to allow a minute or two for picking up Cape Bingham on the northern tip of Chichagof Island, their initial point of reference, or IP, before turning southwards towards the fire. There he, as radar navigator, would start his stopwatch and the bombing run would begin. He scanned his calculations again, in the faint hope that somewhere they could pick up a few extra minutes, even seconds. But the figures told him the same as before. At the most they would have an eleven-minute margin between the time they arrived and the end of the sub’s power and air.

  Burke looked around to check the clusters of extender bombs on the aircrafts’ wings. With their eight-foot-long “hosepipes” sticking out in front, housing the delayed fuses for the high explosives, these bombs were too long for the main bays, which each carried eighty-four five-hundred-pound contact bombs. In all, each hundred-and-fifty-seven-foot-long B-52 in the wave could carry more bombs than fifteen of the B-17’s used in World War Two. In the old days, the President would have had to dispatch a hundred and thirty-five planes—nine squadrons of heavy bombers—to do the same job as these nine.

  Burke tried to see whether the fine wires from the wings which would pull out the safety pin
s from the outside bombs were set properly, but he could not tell. Each plane carried forty thousand gallons of kerosene in its long wings, so the wingspan was in effect a hundred-and-eighty-five-foot fuel bladder. He would have to trust that the ground crew had done their job properly and that there would be no hung bombs left swinging under all that fuel after he pushed the release button.

  Unlike the contact bombs housed in the main bays, the extender bombs on the wings were set to explode above and below the water. Normally he would be carrying rockets on the wings as well, but their nuclear heads were considered useless for the present purposes. Despite the absence of the nuclear tips, Burke viewed the mission as an excellent combat drill for his crews

  Besides himself, the crew of Ebony I consisted of Beddoes, the copilot on his right; Si Johnson, the radar navigator, cramped in the cubbyhole of the lower deck together with Peters, the new navigator; the electronics warfare officer, tucked aft of the two navigators; and finally Stokely, who occupied the “M” model’s nose turret with its four .50 machine guns. The “M” model was a modification of the “H” model that used to house a .20 machine gun in the rear turret, remotely controlled by the gunner in the nose. In the earlier models, the gun had had only a maximum vertical and horizontal angle of sixty degrees. But Stokely reckoned that the position of the guns wasn’t that important. This was a nice, peaceable mission, and he and the E.W. officer, whose talents wouldn’t be needed either, looked forward to watching the others do all the work.

  The really busy members of the crew would be Burke, the copilot, Peters, and most of all Si Johnson, who as radar navigator would be responsible for the accuracy of the bomb run. Burke had flown with Johnson in Vietnam. He thought of the time they had been forced to eject. At least there wouldn’t be any surface-to-air missiles on this mission. Now the only enemy was the thirty-seven minutes separating them from the submarine.

  The plane on his right yawed a little. He switched on the cell intercom. “Let’s keep it tight, fellas. Bernie, you’re wandering.”

  “Right. I’ve got it, A.C.”

  Burke grinned at his copilot. “Got what, Bernie—the shakes? Come on now, pull her in.”

  “Roger.”

  Burke felt his own plane lurch and slip to the left. “Stokely, what the hell are you doing? Most of the other guys are green, but you’re supposed to know the drill. Keep your guns straight ahead. Man, you must have ’em at some angle. Feels like we’ve got an extra flap down there.”

  “Sorry, Chief. My trigger finger’s itchy.”

  “Doesn’t matter; we’re on combat drill. Let’s do it right.”

  Stokely’s voice was cheerful. “You’re the boss.”

  “So get that turret in line with the plane and stop swiveling it. You can bump us around some other time.”

  “Roger.” Stokely brought his guns in line with the bomber’s heading.

  “Captain!” Si Johnson cut in from the black, instrument-crowded deck below.

  “What is it, Si?”

  “There’s something funny on the screen—blips in formation.”

  Burke instinctively glanced ahead into the darkness. “Formation? Aircraft?”

  Si looked at the sweep again. Each time the arm turned around, more dots appeared. Peters leaned worriedly towards the screen. “Looks like the measles.”

  Si Johnson had never seen anything like it. “Not big enough for planes. I’ve double-checked all reports, domestic and foreign, and they say the area should be clear. But there’s hundreds—thousands—of ’em, all bunched together. It’s massive. No recognizable pattern.”

  Burke switched in to the others on the intercell radio. Soon Ebony II was calling the lead bomber. “Same pattern here, Captain.”

  “Ebony Three to Ebony One. We’ve got it too.”

  He spoke quickly to the two cells behind him. “Gold and Purple, is it on your screens?”

  “Gold leader to Ebony One. Affirmative, Captain.”

  “Purple leader to Ebony One. Affirmative.”

  There was a pause as Burke searched his memory. The only thing he could recall remotely like it was the loads of tinfoil flakes they’d dropped in World War Two to confound German radar crews; but this obstruction was moving horizontally, not falling. His voice was calm, but his copilot thought he detected a note of anxiety in it. He spoke now to the whole wave. “All right, anybody got any ideas? Anybody? How about you new boys? Peters?”

  The young navigator shrugged at Si Johnson and looked back embarrassedly at the E.W. officer for help. The latter held up his hands, at a loss. Peters answered reluctantly, “No ideas down here, Captain.”

  The approaching Arctic front was a dark canopy over them, so Burke did not even have the slight benefit of moonlight. Beyond his cockpit all was completely dark. He looked at his air speed indicator. “How fast is it closing, Si?”

  “Moving slow, sir. About thirty miles per hour. But we’ll hit it—around ten minutes from now.”

  Burke looked at the clock amid the mass of dials before him. It was now nearly 2203.

  On the lower deck, Si Johnson’s left hand clenched on a metal calculator until his knuckles whitened. Suddenly he was drenched in cold sweat. He leaned stiffly back against his seat; his right leg and arm were beginning to shake uncontrollably. Peters switched off his intercom, reached over, and touched him on the arm. “Hey, sir—Si, you okay?”

  As if he had just become aware of where he was, Johnson turned his head sharply towards the navigator. “What? Get your hands off me, goddamn it! I’m okay—just a little indigestion. Goddamn junk they give us.”

  Peters apologized and turned his intercom back on. He believed what Johnson had told him. But had he known enough Vietnam veterans, he would almost certainly have recognized the symptoms of flashback. In any case, he was new to Ebony I and he wasn’t about to say anything to anyone, particularly now. The captain was back on the intercom. “Si, give me an altitude to clear this, whatever it is.”

  Johnson found it difficult to focus on his radar set. He spoke slowly. “Three—”

  “Three what, for Christ’s sake?”

  “Thousand—three thousand feet.”

  Stokely interrupted in a tone of happy relief. “That’s no problem. In Nam we dropped our eggs from thirty thousand. That right, Si boy?”

  There was no immediate answer as Johnson, switching off his intercom, leaned back on the seat, terrified. He felt trapped in the black hole of the lower deck, the instruments pressing in around him like malevolent eyes in the night. But even in his fear he managed to shoot a warning glance at Peters. Cowed, the newcomer stayed silent.

  Above them in the cockpit, Burke again checked the clock and altimeter. “No way,” he said. “We can’t risk going another thousand. That would put us smack into that cloud. We’re going to have a hard enough time seeing anything below as it is. Si, how’s that sub’s DF signal?”

  Peters looked over at Si and was surprised again by the change in him. Now he appeared to be the calm veteran Peters had heard about. “We’re right on it, Captain, but it’s weaker’n grandma’s tea. They’re losing power all the time. Could cease transmission any second.”

  Burke, knowing that at this speed a minute off course would cost him at least ten miles, was quick to respond. “That settles it. We’ve got to stay on course. Can’t afford evasive action.” He paused, then said as coolly as he could, “We’ll have to go right through ’em.”

  Si watched the radar sweep again. The screen was no longer speckled with dots but covered with a glowing sheet, so thick and widespread were the oncoming blips. Stokely burst in, his voice raw. “It’s the moon. I bet it’s the goddamn moon showing up on the screen.”

  Burke, holding the steering yoke more firmly than usual as they passed over slight turbulence, snapped at the gunner, “Stokely, will you shut up? It’s not the moon, you hayseed. Christ, you’d have us over China by now.”

  The electronics warfare officer, who immediately thought in
terms of MIGs and surface-to-air missiles, cut in worriedly. “They’re awful thick, Cap’n. Chicken-shit or not, we only need a few to hit us in the right place.”

  Aware that he might have alarmed the wave with his reprimand to Stokely, Burke spoke encouragingly to the whole cell, particularly to the new boys. “Hell, Ebony, we’ve had bigger stuff than this thrown at us.”

  Hart, the radar navigator in Ebony II, felt his throat going dry. “I—I wasn’t in Nam, sir.”

  “Well I was, son. Don’t worry. Hang in there—you’re doing a good job. Just you keep an eye on Si over here. He’ll lead the bomb run. Can do it in his sleep.”

  Hart’s answer was stoic and quite unconvincing. “I’m not worried, sir.”

  “Good. Now, Ebony gunners, listen carefully. We’re not carrying rockets, so we’ve got nothing we can blast ahead to clear a gap for us except the .50s. Your job’ll be to blow a hole through whatever it is so the wave can keep going. Just concentrate on your own sectors and don’t stray into another guy’s. It’s all up to you. I want a nice big circle of nothing right in front of my nose. Got it?”

  “Ebony Two. Got it, A.C.”

  “Ebony Three. Roger, Captain.”

  For an instant, as he cocked the four .50 cannons, Stokely wished that he was aboard the early model B-52’s, tucked away in the tail.

  Now Burke was talking to the whole wave. “I want all cells to stay tight together. Remember, we haven’t time to fool around regrouping. The looser we are, the less concentrated our bombing’ll be near the sub and the greater our chances of being hit by whatever’s coming at us. Gold and Purple leaders, if anything happens to us, carry on with the bomb run. Use Cape Bingham as your initial point, make the turn sooth, and take the sub’s position as your offset aiming point.”

  “Gold A.C. to Ebony leader. Got it.”

  “Purple A.C. to Ebony leader. Will do.”

  Sarah Kyle had simply been informed by Esquimalt Naval Command that the Swordfish was experiencing some “difficulty,” but that “remedial action” was under way. It did not occur to her to ask for more information. She didn’t want to know. Instead, despite the lateness of the Indian summer night, she changed from her nightgown into her gardening clothes—chocolate corduroys, floppy beige sweater, and runners—switched on the backyard floodlight, and made her way out into the garden. Amid the sweet-smelling roses every noise was familiar, every perfume immediately identifiable, and she felt less afraid of the darkness beyond the light than of the unknown which might be visited upon her by sketchy and speculative TV and radio reports about the rescue.