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1320 Monday, July 8.
ADMIRAL SCOTT DUNSMORE HAD BEEN AN OFFICER IN the U.S. Navy for nearly forty years. He had served in warships all over the globe. His last command was of a Nimitz-Class carrier in the Gulf War, facing the missiles of Saddam Hussein.
He occupied his present position as the professional head of the Navy with the utmost distinction. The son of an illustrious Boston banking family, he was regarded as the successor to the present Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff.
Yet nothing, in all of his years as a warship and fleet commander, nothing in all of his years of examinations, degrees, and diplomas, nothing in all of his recent years rubbing shoulders with America’s most eminent politicians, had prepared Admiral Dunsmore to grasp the enormity of the words being uttered to him by Admiral Gene Sadowski…“All six thousand men on board appear to have perished.”
For ten seconds, maybe twenty, he said nothing, and tried to assemble his thoughts. The silence was so prolonged, Admiral Sadowski thought it might be another line of communication down. Dunsmore cleared his throat, searched for words, and just then there was a sharp tap on the door to his office and his senior assistant, a young lieutenant commander, burst in. “Admiral, I got NSA in Fort Meade on the line—Morgan in person—we got one big problem in the Arabian Sea. I have to talk with you. You want me to transfer that call to someone else?”
“Not for the moment,” replied the admiral. “Tell Admiral Morgan we’ll call him back as soon as I finish with this.” And then he addressed Admiral Sadowski for the first time. “Do you have a degree of certainty on that, Admiral?”
“I would not have called unless it was 100 percent, sir. One of our guided missile cruisers, Arkansas, has entered the area around the last known position of the carrier.
“He did so because his Combat Information Center was observing five contacts on the radar screen when there should have been six. He came alongside the five ships, all of which had sustained damage in an obvious nuclear explosion. There’s a lot of radioactive fallout.
“Captain Barry’s Arkansas has already compared his findings with other ships in the Battle Group. Their findings are identical. The Thomas Jefferson has vanished, in an area heavily contaminated with nuclear fallout. No one has seen any sign of wreckage, but the sonar operators were extremely concerned by the impact of an explosion, which took place at 2103. We have further loss of life, sir, possibly twenty to thirty men. But nothing comparable to the catastrophe involving the aircraft carrier.”
“So. Into the valley of death rode the six thousand,” intoned the admiral, an edge of disdain in his voice, suggesting he held CINCPAC responsible for the entire outrage.
Gene Sadowski betrayed no irritation. He fought back his sorrow at the loss of several personal friends, and replied, “Yessir. I suppose they did.”
Admiral Dunsmore was not able to discern the shock in his voice, for the two men were strangers, and their priorities were different. The Washington-based Naval Chief now faced one of the most onerous tasks ever visited upon a peacetime commander—within thirty minutes he must face the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs, and then, possibly, the President of the United States. To each of them he would be required to explain how his Navy had managed to lose more than twice as many serving officers and men as had been killed at Pearl Harbor on December 7, 1941.
“Thank you, Admiral,” he said. “I’m grateful for the promptness and the privacy of your call. Please stand by for further instructions. Inform the Battle Group to close down all communication circuits except within the fleet, and to Pearl Harbor HQ. And thank you once more for the clarity of your call.”
“Holy shit!” he shouted as he replaced the receiver.
The admiral pressed the button to summon Lieutenant Commander Jay Bamberg back into his office. The young officer moved faster than the admiral had ever witnessed before. He cleared the big room in two bounds and blurted out the chilling but four-minute old news that Admiral Morgan, over at the National Security Agency, was “damn near certain we’ve lost a big warship in a nuclear explosion somewhere in the northern half of the Arabian Sea.”
Jay Bamberg was visibly shaken. He was too well trained to allow his sentences to become confused, but he kept talking. “Morgan has evidence on the satellite, sir,” added the CNO’s assistant. “They picked it up on one of the KH-11’s which was still photographing all of the approaches to the Gulf after that last panic. They have a clear picture of an obvious rise in temperature in the water, consistent only with a nuclear test, right in the middle of the Battle Group surrounding the Thomas Jefferson. He thinks we may have lost the carrier. Says he cannot think of any other solution to such a major explosion. Wants you to call him right back. He’s hoping to have more for you. Jesus Christ! Can you believe this!…er…sorry, sir.”
Admiral Dunsmore shook his head and said resignedly, “That last call was from CINCPAC. We’ve lost the carrier, almost certainly in a nuclear accident. They believe there are no survivors.”
“Good God, sir.”
“Yes. Good God…Now let’s touch base with Admiral Morgan…then with CINCPAC. Tell NSA we do know, and find out if they have anything significant I should hear. Then suggest Admiral Morgan contact CINCPAC directly, and meanwhile please arrange for me to meet the Chairman in the next ten minutes as a matter of the highest possible priority.”
Lieutenant Commander Bamberg left the room, and Admiral Dunsmore tried to prevent his mind from conjuring up a picture of a U.S. aircraft carrier containing six thousand of the finest men in the nation being instantly vaporized ten thousand miles from home. It was always fatal to focus on individuals, but for the moment he could not believe he would never see Zack Carson again, and the death of Jack Baldridge was almost more than he could cope with.
He stood up and walked across the room, put on his jacket, and paced back and forth for a few minutes. Then there was a tap on the door and Jay Bamberg put his head around the corner and said quietly, “The Chairman will see you immediately.”
Scott Dunsmore had rarely, if ever, looked forward less to a meeting. “Come down with me,” he said, and the two men strode out into corridor seven, turned left, past the salute of the young Naval guard, and onto E Ring, the great circular outer throughway of the Pentagon, where the High Commands of all three services operated, the Army on the third floor, the Navy and Air Force on the fourth. The office of the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs was located on the second floor, immediately below that of the Secretary of Defense. Each of the five outer corridors which traverse the Pentagon, on all five upper levels, was over three hundred yards long. The world’s largest office building contained more than seventeen miles of passageway, and was three times bigger than the Empire State Building.
It is said that no two points in this monstrous military labyrinth are more than seven minutes apart. As far as Admiral Dunsmore was concerned, seven hours would have been much better. The short journey down the elevator and into the office of the senior military figure in America seemed to him as if it took only seven seconds before he stood in the outer office of the beefy five-star general who ran the place, fifty-five-year-old Joshua R. Paul of New York, Vietnam veteran, Gulf War tank commander, possibly the best running back ever to play football for West Point.
“I am not,” muttered Admiral Dunsmore, in the general direction of Jay Bamberg, “terribly looking forward to this. Wait here, will you? I may need assistance.”
“Morning, CNO,” said the Chairman. “Siddown. Wanna cup of coffee? I’m having some.” He grinned cheerfully, his bright blue eyes peering over the top of his half-spectacles, noticing instantly the look of undisguised concern on the normally composed face of the tall, patrician Chief of the Navy. “What’s up?”
“Well, sir, first of all, I might recommend we both give serious consideration to the possibility of a bottle of brandy rather than a couple of mugs of coffee.”
“Oh shit. Trouble?”
“Very, ver
y big trouble, sir. I am almost certain we have lost an aircraft carrier.”
“Well I suggest you get your guys to find it, real quick.”
“Nossir. I am talking about the total destruction of a U.S. Navy aircraft carrier, along with all six thousand men on board. Nuclear accident in the Arabian Sea.”
General Josh Paul sucked his breath in, hissing through his teeth. “Jesus Christ! Tell me you’re kidding me. You could not be serious. You are sitting there telling me that we somehow have to deal with the biggest single peacetime crisis in American history? You sure that as Joint Chiefs we’re not having some kind of a Joint Dream?”
“Do I look as if I’m dreaming, sir?”
“No, Scott,” he said gently. “No you don’t. You look as if you have just seen a fucking ghost.”
“Six thousand of them, actually, sir.”
“Jesus Christ! Okay. Now give it to me slowly and carefully.”
“Right, sir. The one-hundred-thousand-ton carrier Thomas Jefferson is on station in the Arabian Sea about four hundred miles southeast of the Strait of Hormuz.
“She is loosely surrounded by her Battle Group, you know, cruisers, destroyers, half a dozen frigates, a couple of SSN’s. Not to mention her entire air force on deck and in the hangars. ’Bout eighty-four aircraft.
“Around twenty-five miles away, they see a sudden flash, sonar operators all over the fleet would have had their ears blown out but for the audio cut-off system. A series of damn great waves come through and almost sink four ships, the wind from the blast causes some damage, all communications go out, and within twenty minutes or a half hour it becomes obvious to a couple of the big outer warships that the carrier has vanished.
“There’s no communication. And when the radar systems start working again, she’s definitely vanished. And the entire downwind area is covered by radioactive particles. CINCPAC hears from Captain Barry on board Arkansas. He’s the senior captain. He searched the last known area of the carrier personally, and has now assumed command. He gives his degree of certainty as 100 percent. Admiral Morgan over at NSA has a satellite picture showing the kind of increase in water temperature consistent only with a nuclear test.”
“I guess I don’t need to ask whether the carrier was carrying substantial nuclear missiles, do I?”
“No, sir. You do not.”
“Okay. You get back upstairs and begin compiling in the next ten minutes all the information we can get. I’ll contact the White House, and request a personal, immediate meeting with the President. He can decide if anyone else sits in. My instinct is the less people who know about this for the next two hours the better. Get back down here fifteen minutes from now; we’ll go down in my elevator, and I’ll have the car waiting for us.”
“You want me to come as well, sir?” asked Admiral Dunsmore somewhat lamely.
“You don’t think I’m gonna deal with this one on my own,” replied the Chairman wryly. “Besides, the President is probably going to hit the ceiling. I’d prefer he was furious with both of us, than just me.”
“Yes, I do see that of course,” said the admiral. “He will have to broadcast to the nation. Which he is not going to love. How long before you announce it to the press?”
“Well, we’ll liaise with the White House on precisely what time you are going to announce it to the press.”
“I was rather afraid you might mention that, sir.”
“There is a certain kind of real heavy tackle I have always taken great care to avoid. Brace yourself, Admiral. We’re heading for the roughest seas either of us has ever seen.”
The somewhat bludgeoning nature of the conversation had the effect of shifting the admiral’s mind into a higher gear. The entire hideous scenario was moving rapidly from a grim, distant, unreal accident into a stark and immediate nightmare which required urgent, drastic attention. He must bring clarity to the disaster, he must find a way to lay this out before the President of the United States in a form which was lucid, reasonable, and above all manageable. Everything is manageable to the full-sized intellect, he was telling himself.
“But God help me if I’m not up to it,” he said aloud. “Because if I screw it up, the President will hang me up by the thumbs, or worse. Within about six minutes of this announcement there will be people demanding that the Navy never be permitted to drive around the world armed with such shocking, self-destructive weapons.”
The CNO and Lieutenant Commander Bamberg headed back to the fourth floor, carrying with them the gargantuan secret which all too soon would cause the media to ask the kind of dread questions service chiefs detest….
“Was this accident avoidable?” “Should big-deck aircraft carriers be carrying these kinds of weapons?” “Should anyone be carrying these kinds of weapons?” “With the nuclear threat of Russia now diminished, why are we doing this?” “Isn’t this what the anti-nuclear lobby has been warning us about for thirty years?” “Did it take the death of so many young Americans to finally show you what the liberal Democrats have known for years?” “Are you a fit person to be running this country?” “Should the Pentagon be abolished since everyone in it is plainly crazy?”
The real question was one he was not yet ready to face.
The admiral did not look forward to the forthcoming press briefing, which would almost certainly be staged at the White House. But he knew the President himself would be in for a far rougher ride this evening.
Back in his office he ordered Jay Bamberg to reopen the line to Admiral Sadowski, and he called back Admiral Morgan at NSA. The intelligence chief was steady and controlled, and advised that the CNO make a public announcement very quickly. He had already fielded a call from the Russian Naval intelligence commander and feigned ignorance. In his opinion something needed saying officially, inside the next ninety minutes, or someone else would break the news for them.
The CNO wound up the call swiftly and spoke briefly to CINCPAC. The news was sparse. It was still pitch-dark and the weather was worsening. The frigates felt it dangerous to reenter the contaminated “last known” position. There could be no further doubt about the fate of the Thomas Jefferson. The great ship had gone, in a nuclear fireball, made less blinding by the low clouds, fog, and rain which annually blanketed the Arabian Sea during July and August when the southwest monsoon swept in.
Scott Dunsmore gathered up his final reserves of self-control, and instructed Lieutenant Commander Bamberg to speak once more to CINCPAC and inform Admiral Sadowski that in his opinion the remainder of the Thomas Jefferson Battle Group should return to Diego Garcia, regroup, make temporary repairs, and head as soon as possible for their home port of San Diego.
Then he walked back out into the wide corridor of E Ring and set off for the meeting which had the potential, in his opinion, to begin an insidious political reduction in U.S. Navy firepower—firepower which had grown relentlessly from the early days of the Polaris submarines to the modern era of Trident and the carrier Battle Groups. No one walking along E Ring noticed him brushing the forearm of his dark blue suit across his weather-beaten face.
Dunsmore joined General Paul in the second-floor office and the two Chiefs, accompanied by two military aides, made their way down in the elevator to the subterranean Pentagon garage. The staff car was parked four strides from the door. Only General Paul and Admiral Dunsmore embarked, and the Army driver, briefed in the urgency of the journey, drove swiftly out into the sweltering humidity of a Washington summer afternoon, air-conditioning at full blast, right foot ready to hit the gas pedal as they headed for I-395.
“Did you tell the President what has happened?” asked the admiral.
“No. I interrupted some meeting in the cabinet room and told him I was on my way to see him on a matter of such grave consequences, I would not even trust the White House switchboard to overhear the conversation.
“You know how quick he is? He just said, ‘Fine. Get over here. I’ll be waiting. Do I cancel appointments?’
“I told
him in my view he ought to clear his schedule for at least two hours. If I’d been completely honest I probably shoulda said two months, or years.”
“You go through the White House Chief of Staff for this kind of appointment?”
“No. With this President, there’s a direct line between CJC and the Chief Executive. Someone else answered the call and I said: ‘This is the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs speaking from the Pentagon. I need to speak to the President on a matter of extreme urgency. Right now.’ That’s all it takes. He was on the line in seven seconds.”
The staff car sped across the Potomac, and the tires squealed as they swung off 395 at the Maine Avenue exit, heading west along the waterfront, and then hard right, straight up the short wide highway which cleaves across the top end of the Mall, past the Washington Monument and onto Constitution Avenue.
As they threaded their way up through the government buildings, Admiral Dunsmore asked two questions: “Will he be alone? And who speaks first?”
“Yes, to the first. At least initially. I do, to the second. Then I’m passing the ball right into your safe hands.”
“Where are you going to be during my explanation?”
“I am afraid to say, right next to you.”
“West Executive Avenue entrance coming up, sir,” announced the driver as he hit the brakes. And it was already clear they were expected. The guard waved them straight through, and at the door they were both instantly issued security passes handed to them by Secret Service agents.
Two of them escorted the military Chiefs straight into the West Wing, directly to the southeast corner, to the Oval Office. The senior agent tapped just once and opened the door. He and his colleague walked through first, beckoning the general and the admiral to follow. The President stood up, nodded to the agents to wait outside, shook hands gravely with his visitors—both of whom he knew well—and asked them to sit down in the two sturdy wooden armchairs set before his desk.
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