The Secretary of State laughed heartily and said, “It fits this situation almost exactly.”
SecDef, whose sense of humor was computerized, regarded the General with a puzzled frown and made a mental note for future reference that the General was too frivolous to be one of the Joint Chiefs.
When the President entered the Cabinet room he was wearing a broad grin. As the meeting came to order he announced, “Gentlemen, I’ve just come from the war room where I exchanged views with Kosygin on the hot line. As of now, we are in complete agreement on the Near East. He says he will not interfere unless we do. I assured him we have no intention to do so. He was concerned that the Israelis might go too far, and I told him we were too and would try to make them be reasonable.”
“Did he say anything about Nasser’s charges that our planes have been helping the Israelis?” asked the Secretary of State.
“No. But I did. I told him there wasn’t a word of truth in it. He said he knew that because their destroyers report every plane that lands or takes off from our carriers. He said we have kept a six-plane fighter patrol over the fleet for the past three days, but that’s all.”
“He’s exactly right about that,” observed CNO.
“Now, we’ve got to be absolutely certain that none of our ships or planes get involved in this,” said the President.
“I’ve already taken care of that,” said SecDef. “I’ve told both the Air Force and the Navy they’ve got to keep everything outside a four hundred-mile radius from Suez ... and my people are monitoring the command circuits to make sure these orders are obeyed.”
“I pulled the Sixth Fleet back west of Crete over a week ago on my own initiative,” said the CNO, who wasn’t at all disgruntled about having SecDef's people kibitzing on how he ran his fleets.
“Okay - that’s fine,” said the President, “because I told Kosygin we were keeping all our ships and planes well clear of the combat area. Now, gentlemen ...”
At this point, a wide-eyed Navy Captain burst into the Cabinet Room and handed the President a four-foot strip of tape right out of one of the decoding machines in the war room. “We just intercepted an urgent message to ComSixthFleet, sir,” he said.
The President’s face froze as he scanned it. Then he read aloud, “From USS Liberty. Am under attack by aircraft and torpedo boats - SOS - SOS.”
There was a stunned silence for a moment and then CNO demanded, “What the hell is the Liberty?”
“It’s a communications surveillance vessel, sir,” replied the Captain.
“In plain English, that means a spy ship?” said the Secretary of State.
“Those Arabs must be crazy to attack one of our ships,” said the President.
“Where was that ship?” demanded CNO of SecDef.
“I should be asking you,” replied SecDef. “It’s a Navy ship.”
“But it’s working for your people in Defense Intelligence Agency, sir. They bypass command channels all the time, so we never know where their ships are. Arab torpedo boats can’t be as far out as Crete. I think the Liberty must be much closer to Suez than that!”
A Lieutenant from the war room burst in with another tape and handed it to the President. The President read, “From ComSixthFleet to the Commander in Chief: UOD am launching planes and sending destroyers to protect Liberty. Her position twelve miles offshore from Gaza Strip.”
“What the hell does ‘UOD’ mean?” demanded the President.
“Unless otherwise directed,” said CNO. “It means Sixth Fleet has made up his mind, and we’ve got to act fast if you want to stop him.”
“Hell, no! I don’t want to stop him. I’m not going to let those crazy Arabs get away with this ... But I’ve got to tell Moscow what we’re doing,” he added. “This meeting is adjourned to the war room.”
In the war room, the President soon had the Kremlin on the teletype. “One of our ships is being attacked,” he sent. “Sixth Fleet is now launching planes and sending destroyers to defend it. They will not interfere in the Arab-Israeli war.”
In less than a minute the answer came chattering back from Moscow. “We understand. We know about attack on your ship.”
“Those bastards must be reading our codes,” blurted the head of the CIA.
“Which code was Liberty’s message in?” demanded CNO.
“Plain English,” replied the duty Captain.
“Thank God for that,” said CIA and CNO together.
The decoding machine started grinding out tape again. The President read it aloud as it came out. “From Liberty. Have been torpedoed and strafed. Many casualties. Am limping west at ten knots. Attacking planes and ships had Israeli markings.”
“Good God,” said the President. “That must be wrong.”
“The Arabs could easily put Israeli markings on their planes and ships,” said Ambassador Goldberg.
“Or it could be they were Israeli,” said the CNO. “Trigger-happy aviators sometimes go off half-cocked, you know.”
All doubt about this point was soon removed. The monitors picked up an urgent message to ComSixthFleet from Israeli Naval Headquarters in Tel Aviv: “Regret to inform you our forces have attacked USS Liberty near combat zone in Gaza by mistake.”
“It seems almost impossible,” said the President, while everyone was trying to adjust to this amazing turn of events.
“Of course,” said Ambassador Goldberg, “that last message could be a phony put out by the Arabs.”
“Impossible,” said CNO. “Our direction finders would pinpoint the transmitting station before they got halfway through the message. It was the Israelis, all right. One of those mistakes the flyboys make. This is why I pulled all our combatant ships out of that area,” he added, with an accusing glare at SecDef.
“Harumph,” observed SecDef and was about to amplify his observation when the President cut in. “Let’s not get into a hassle here about who’s to blame for this,” he said. “George, you and the Admiral settle it between you and let me know. Meantime, we’ve got to rescue our ship - if we can.”
Chapter Nine
All Hands to Hanging Stations
That same morning, right after eight bells, the Russian pulled up abeam to starboard, and the chicken game began again. All Fatso’s boys were on deck. No one was visible on the Russian ship except the OOD on the port wing of the bridge, staring straight ahead.
Pretty soon the destroyer came sidling over on an almost parallel course until its side was only six feet from the Turtle’s. Then it began weaving in and out - out to fifty feet and back in to six. The third time it started in, Fatso tapped the helmsman on the shoulder and said, “I’ll take the wheel.” The wheel was inside the pilothouse - not visible from the destroyer’s bridge.
As the destroyer was steadying at six feet, Fatso suddenly spun his wheel hard over to starboard and flipped his props into neutral. The Turtle’s bow swerved to starboard, and there was a rending screech as the “can opener” cut into the destroyer’s thin plates. With its props idling, the Turtle began dropping aft, slicing the Russian’s side as if it were cardboard. After a couple of seconds, Fatso spun his wheel the other way, and his bow swung to port, pulling the blade out of the Russian’s side. As they came clear, Fatso threw his engines to full ahead and hauled out to port, leaving the Russian with a neat six-foot gash in his side an inch wide, four feet above the water line.
“I cut a bad friend with a razor that way once,” observed Satchmo, admiringly.
“Get that signal up while he’s still trying to figure out what happened. Call him on the light,” yelled Fatso, walking out to the starboard wing of the bridge and putting his glass on the Russian.
Up went the signal flags to the Turtle’s yardarm, saying in international code, “Do you need assistance?” The searchlight began blinking, “Ya ochen ob ztom sogalyu” - the Professor and the Judge claiming that according to their pocket dictionary this was the Russian version of “sorry about that.”
Followe
d a tense couple of minutes with the two ships steaming along on parallel courses a hundred yards apart. All hands on the Turtle watched the Russian respectfully - as a little guy always does right after he draws a bit of blood from a big guy.
“It’s nothin’ but a scratch,” observed Fatso. “I doubt very much they’ll try to make a federal case out of it,” he said rather dubiously.
An officer and a group of men appeared on deck of the destroyer and leaned over the rail looking at the gash. They were soon joined by their Captain, who peered over the side for a few moments, then straightened up, shrugged his shoulders, and probably said, “Neechevo.”
The skipper went back to the bridge and soon their searchlight began blinking. It said, “I object. You improperly violating rules of the road.”
“Hah!” said Fatso, with a broad grin. “My guess was right. All he’s gonna do is squawk.”
This opinion was soon confirmed as the Russian dropped aft and resumed his station a mile astern.
“Okay,” said Fatso. “Now send him this on your light,” and he handed Jughaid the following: “Regret my helmsman’s stupid mistake. He will be punished. Signed, Commanding Officer, USS Turtle.”
As the Russian blinked his light receipting for the message, Fatso said, “All right now, boys. An hour before sunset I want all hands on deck in dress blues. We’re going to have the first official hanging in this Navy since John Paul Jones’s day.”
“Do you think they’ll believe it?” asked Scuttlebutt.
“I think there’s a good chance they may,” said Fatso. “This will check with what their own propaganda tells them about us all the time. He’ll be able to tell his Admiral about it, and say this proves the Americans know they were wrong. It might even be on the front page of Pravda tomorrow.”
All day long, the Russian kept a respectful distance astern.
An hour before sunset, Satchmo got out his bugle and blew “Assembly.” It was amplified by Fatso’s hi-fi loudspeakers so it would be clearly audible astern. The boys all assembled on the bridge in their dress-blue uniforms facing aft, and Fatso fired a couple of red Very stars in the air. The signal gun let out a boom to starboard, the traditional signal of ships at sea to attract the attention of nearby vessels.
Jughaid, with a spyglass on the Russian, soon reported, “There’s a half dozen of ‘em on the bridge with their binoculars on us.”
Then Satchmo, bareheaded, with his hands tied behind him, was led up to the rostrum where Fatso stood. A rope with a noose in it dangled from the port yardarm. The men were called to attention, and Fatso went through the motions of reading a document out loud. What he actually read was an item from the morning radio news saying the Supreme Court had thrown out Danny Escobeda’s latest murder rap and ordered him turned loose.
Then Judge Frawley stepped forward and put a black hood over Satchmo’s head while two others got the noose and began adjusting it around his neck. In doing this, they obscured Satch from view for a moment. Satch ducked below and Charley Noble was substituted for him.
Soon the noose was in place, and the two who adjusted it took their places alongside Charley, holding him up by his arms. To observers astern, it appeared that the culprit had lost his nerve at the last moment, his knees had given way, and he had to be held up. The others fell out of ranks and manned the hauling part of the rope.
Fatso broke out his Bosun’s pipe, let out a long blast on it, and the boys ran forward with the rope, two-blocking Charley in a smart, seamanlike manner to the yardarm.
“Let that be a lesson to the rest of you guys,” observed Fatso. “Belay that line from his feet to the rail so he won’t flop around too much in the wind, and then secure from hanging stations.”
Fatso and Scuttlebutt kept their glasses focused on the destroyer astern. “Must be a dozen of ‘em on the bridge now, with their glasses on us,” observed Scuttlebutt.
“Yeah,” said Fatso. “And there’s the Captain on the big quartermaster’s spyglass - talking a blue streak to the guy alongside him ... probably the exec.”
Pretty soon the destroyer began easing up closer, and then sheared out and took station two hundred yards abeam.
“You notice he gives us a little more elbow room, now,” said Fatso.
“Do you think they’re wise to it yet?” asked Scuttlebutt.
“Hell, no,” said Fatso. “Even from right here on this bridge, old Charley looks so real it gives me the creeps to look at him ... You see, the skipper is going back to his cabin now, shaking his head. I’ll betcha he’s saying, ‘If I hadn’t seen it with my own eyes I wouldn’t have believed it - even if I read it in Pravda.’”
“There’s a guy on the bridge with a movie camera taking pictures,” observed Scuttlebutt.
“They’ll probably be featured on TV and in every movie palace in Russia,” said Fatso.
“Do you want to send him any signal about this, Cap’n?” asked Jughaid.
“Hell, no. I don’t want him to think there’s anything special about it. We’ll just go on about our business as if we were used to doing this, and let them draw their own conclusions.”
On the Russian ship, that’s exactly what they were doing. The exec was in the skipper’s cabin, saying “What do you think, Captain? Do you believe that’s a real man?”
“Yes. I think it is,” said the skipper. “That Captain is a wild man. He must be crazy to ram a big ship like this with a small craft like that. So he would think nothing of hanging one of his sailors to excuse himself.”
“Is it all right to have our crew on deck and take a look?” asked the exec.
“Yes. Of course,” said the Captain. “Get the men all together and explain to them that this is the way it used to be in the Navy of the Czars. But no one has been hanged in Russia since the revolution.”
“We have movies of the whole thing, Captain,” said the exec.
“Good. They will be well pleased with them in Moscow. We may get promoted.”
That evening after chow all hands were listening to the Armed Forces radio.
“Jerusalem: Israeli armies continue to drive ahead everywhere almost unopposed. Arab resistance has collapsed on all fronts, and our troops today overwhelmed the Egyptian garrison and reopened the Gulf of Aqaba.”
“That sure goes to show something - but I’m not sure what,” declared Scuttlebutt, shaking his head sadly.
“It shows that history repeats itself,” said Ginsberg. “We ran the Arabs out of the Sinai Peninsula in five days back in ‘56. They haven’t learned a damn thing in the past ten years.”
“Rome: There is a news blackout in Cairo, but Nasser hurled more charges against the western nations and claims that planes from the U.S. Sixth Fleet are helping the Israelis. He said our soldiers in the desert are righting bravely against great odds. Neutral observers think Cairo may be getting ready to ask for a cease fire.”
“They shouldn’t cease firing till they get to the pyramids,” observed Ginsberg.
After the news, there was a lot of dot-dash traffic on the Russian frequency. The Professor and Ginsberg spent an hour listening in and taking radio bearings on the various transmitting stations. They reported to Fatso, “Our friend back there astern sent a couple of long messages, and the station that receipted for them bears northeast of us.”
“That’s their base back in Greece,” said Fatso. “He was prob’ly telling them about getting nudged - and maybe about the hanging.”
“There was also a long message from the base, answered by a station bearing due east.”
“Hmmmmm,” said Fatso. “Israel and Egypt are east of us. They sure as hell ain’t asking the Jews if they need any help beating up the Arabs. They must of been passing information to Cairo.”
More war news that evening continued to tell an overwhelming victory for the Israelis. The only claim the Egyptians were still making was that their brave soldiers would fight to the death defending Cairo against the combined forces of the United States, England,
and the Jews.
Then the radio loudspeaker produced a shocker.
“Washington: The White House announced that the USS Liberty, a noncombatant naval ship, has been attacked by planes and torpedo boats in international waters twelve miles off the coast of Israel. A number of her crew were killed, and many are wounded. The Liberty is limping west in nearly sinking condition. The Sixth Fleet is speeding to her rescue. Present reports indicate that the attack was made by Israeli forces.”
There was a stunned silence for a moment. Then Ginsberg said, “Gawd almighty! That’s impossible. It must of been the Arabs.”
“Don’t be too sure,” said Fatso. “This wouldn’t be the first time that trigger-happy flyboys shot up a friendly ship.”
“The Arabs done it - and they’ll try to blame it on the Israelis,” insisted Ginsberg.
Later bulletins confirmed that it was, indeed, the Israelis who shot up the Liberty. Then, “Washington: President Johnson called the Kremlin on the hot line to inform them the Sixth Fleet is sending planes and ships to defend the Liberty but denied that they had taken any part in attacks on the Egyptians.”
“Hoo boy!” said Fatso. “This thing might get blown up into a real war.”
“Whaddya mean, real war?” demanded Ginsberg. “I’ll bet them Arabs think this one they’re in is pretty real, right now.”
“Hell, I mean an atomic war between us and Russia,” said Fatso. “Compared to that, this one here ain’t even a fart in a teapot.”
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