17

U.S.S. Guam

In the darkness steel cried aloud, twisted by the immense force of the sea. A helicopter carrier was a big ship, but its very weight made it flex, deform, as the waves heaved and tore at its flanks.

The man lay awake, listening to the torment that came clearly through the metal to his ear. Rough weather, he thought. And getting worse. It was dark around him, as if the lightless ship, groaning in the implacable embrace of the sea, was already settling four thousand feet into the endless night below.

He raised his hand, half-expecting the rough underside of a lid above his head. When it encountered nothing he let it fall back to the bunk. He swiveled his eyes to the luminous dial of a chronometer, and forgot Poe.

It was almost midnight. Almost the magic instant when today became yesterday, tomorrow today.

When I was a child …

The thought came from nowhere, from the maelstrom of fancy and doubt that had filled his mind since he lay down. The man who lay in the dark did not often remember his childhood. But now, alone, he let a corner of that carefully wrapped past unfold.

As a child he had waited for midnight, lying in his bunk bed with his older brother. It was the mark of adulthood, to stay up, and though their dad had ordered them to bed they could still, boylike, defy him by staying awake. They were determined to. And when, by the light of a toy flashlight, he had seen the hands join, he had whispered to his brother; but his only reply was a snore.

Only Ike Sundstrom had kept his eyes open. To see, sliding across their ceiling, the headlights of the Hudson as his father drove off for the last time.

Now, in the darkened stateroom, far at sea, he wished his brother were there. Or his wife. Anyone … anyone, that he might not be so alone.

He turned over impatiently and fluffed his pillow for the dozenth time. Damn it, he thought, I knew this would be a bad night. He had never been able to sleep before important tests, interviews, or decisions. The steward had brought him milk, then been sent back to the pantry for a piece of pie. He didn’t need the calories, but he couldn’t sleep when he was hungry. Now he felt full.

But that was not what kept him awake.

His mind milled on like the wooden ducks one saw on the lawns of suburbs, beating the wind with their wings but going nowhere. It would not cease. All that night it had imagined difficulties, problems, conspiracies, accidents. Then it elaborated intricate plans to deal with each one. To some extent he enjoyed this. He believed that thinking through problems before they arose made you readier to deal with them. But now he was deadly tired, he wanted to rest and forget, and his mind would not let him. Despite his will it circled back again and again, like a faulty torpedo, to two things. One, the impending action. And two, the treachery and incompetence that surrounded him.

This whole day has been an object lesson, he thought angrily, in how not to run a task force. At every turn Hogan, that clock-puncher, had obstructed him, as he had through the entire cruise. The chief staff officer’s job was to make the commodore’s easier, to act as an alter ego. Instead Hogan obtruded difficulties at every turn. He was always whining about the men, about maintenance, about his sacred “routine.”

Sundstrom closed his fists in the dark. The man had no conception of what real leadership meant. If everything ran by routine, why was there a squadron commander at all? No, his job was to upset routine, to jolt people into seeing their own error and carelessness, and to ready them for battle. That was what Sixth Fleet and the CINC expected, and that, by Christ, was what Ike Sundstrom was going to give them: a responsive, detail-oriented team, ready to do whatever needed doing. If he let the Hogan-types handle it, they would be caught with their pants down, every time—just as they had when the Soviet patrol plane showed up.

Another stab of memory made him writhe under the sheets. The debacle that afternoon. First, their reaction had been incredibly slow. In the Pacific his destroyer had been buttoned up and ready for battle in seven minutes. These unwieldy amphibious ships took ten, twelve, fourteen minutes to report. He couldn’t believe it was that much more complicated for them. In three months of drills he had tried to hammer the time down, with only indifferent success. In that respect, today hadn’t been bad—what was it, ten minutes for the whole formation? That was progress, anyway.

But the biggest problem was not his commanding officers. They were lackluster, that was certain. Sometimes he wondered if that was why he had been ordered here, to whip a slack organization back into shape. At other times he suspected that it was an exile, contrived by his enemies at the Bureau to hamstring his chances for making flag. But they were not the main problem. The main problem was his staff.

Worthless was too kind a word for them. He’d realized that the minute he stepped aboard, four months before. MacInroe had let them go to pot, indulged them, and when he expected them to perform or face the consequences they reacted with resentment and what amounted almost to sabotage. The N-2, Byrne, was a fool, full of fancy phrases and quick only at avoiding real work. A limp-wrist type. The supply officer, Glazer, was too young to know the ropes. The engineering officer was a nonentity. Lenson … a possible exception; if he had a few more years under his belt, they might do something together. As it was, the operations officer was poisoning him with his slack attitude.

It was Flasher who had humiliated him in front of the whole task group that afternoon. Sundstrom grimaced at a pang above his navel. That was what made it maddening: It looked as if he had been wrong and the fat lieutenant right. It was not his fault; it was the fault of the gunnery officers on the ships; they had panicked and loaded with live ammo. That was evident. But even Lenson had stared at him, after canceling the order to fire, as if he was in the wrong.

He lay in the dark, eyes open, and his mind spun in tight circles of rage and humiliation. Over and over he retraced the day, ending always with the moment when his own staffer had countermanded his order, and the others had gone along.

That must not happen again.

At last, it seemed like hours later, his anger ebbed, and he drifted toward sleep.

The phone buzzed. He slammed his knuckles on the steel fixture getting it free. “Commodore,” he snarled. “What is it?”

“Staff watch officer, sir. Sir, we have a crossing merchant vessel, range thirty thousand, no sidelights. Course is one-two-zero, six knots. Closest approach will be—”

“What’s our course?”

“We came to westerly leg at 0130, Commodore; we’re on two-seven-zero.”

“Go on.”

“Closest point of approach will be two thousand yards astern of Bowen, at 0210. Recommend turning the formation right to three-two-zero, that will clear—”

“Wait a minute,” Sundstrom said. Sitting up, alone in the dark, he passed his hand over a sweat-slick forehead. The ship creaked and vibrated as a trough passed beneath. He tried to visualize the sea, courses and speeds, but it had deserted him. He could not recall the course of the incoming ship. “Wait … wait … oh, negative,” he said. “How far ahead of us is the escort?”

“Ten thousand yards, sir.”

“What is that goddamned AGI doing?”

“Snoopy’s still in his usual station, sir, four thousand yards ahead of us.”

“Maintain base course. Tell Bowen to maneuver independently to avoid,” he said. “Maybe we’ll get lucky and this guy will hit the Russian.”

“Aye, sir.” The receiver clicked. Sundstrom replaced it and lay back, sweating. His hands curled tightly into the sheets.

This was useless. He was not going to sleep. Work? He had worked all day, but it was all there was left in the end. He swung his legs to the deck and shoved his feet into slippers. He turned on the light over his desk and sat, pulling a chart toward him.

He had studied it briefly the day before, after Lenson had brought in the first draft oporder. He had doubted, then, that it would amount to anything. Now, with the twin shocks of the Turkish sortie and the embassy seizure, the probability of Urgent Lightning being executed was growing by the hour.

The thought made his stomach tighten again. Carry out an amphibious landing … he’d practiced, but he felt all too little confidence. Either in his own skills, or in those of his staff.

He sat at the desk, listening to the cries of the ship, and tried to imagine how the situation looked to Roberts, and above him CINCUSNAVEUR, and above him the CNO, the Secretary of the Navy … and higher; a decision like this would go all the way up the line. A long hostage crisis was out of the question. This administration couldn’t afford it, not now, with the elections warming up. It had too many bad echoes. If it wasn’t resolved quickly by the local authorities there would be enormous pressure to move in, and fast.

Sundstrom propped his chin on his hands and stared at the chart. There were only two ways to get troops into the Eastern Med. One was by air. If he was in charge he would consider the 101st Airborne, based in Germany. The range was too great for helos, but a conventional parachute jump from transport planes would be the fastest way to put a force on the ground. Drawbacks to that … he pulled down the Navy-issue atlas and measured miles clumsily with his fingers. No, damn it, the range made air assault marginal. One-way, maybe, but not even that if the southern rim allies refused refueling facilities. And in this case, they might.

There would be political drawbacks to an airborne landing, too. He couldn’t remember the last time one had been carried out, other than in Vietnam. It had an unpleasant flavor of war, that was sure.

The other possibility was the MARG.

He imagined himself sitting in the War Room, judging alternatives. In favor of the Ready Group: They were on station; they had mobility and light armor and helicopters. Again in favor, there was plenty of precedent. The Sixth Fleet had gone ashore dozens of times, all the way from police operations up to near wartime situations. It was almost routine, and the press was used to it. The fact that the troops were sea-supported guaranteed their transience in a way that the Army and Air Force, with their penchant for giant supply depots and bases ashore, could not. Send in the Marines … it had a solid ring to it. This was just the kind of operation the Corps was designed to do.

The trouble is, he thought, the Task Force just isn’t strong enough.

One Marine Amphibious Unit was too small for a full-force intervention, even facing Third World armies. Their weapons were too light. Two thousand men with a handful of armor might be adequate for an unopposed landing as a peacekeeping detachment, or at most a coastal raid. With two-carrier air cover they might even hold a stretch of beach against counterattack for a few days. But it was not an invasion force, not at all.

All true … but looking at it objectively, Sundstrom had a nasty feeling that it might happen. Roberts might pin the rose on him. If he did, he hoped that at least one aircraft-carrier battle group came along with it.

Sixth Fleet’s attitude worried him. The contretemps about getting underway from Italy had been a bad precedent. He did not know Roberts as well as he pretended. (If he was honest, he doubted if the admiral remembered him: They had met only once, at a Navy League dinner in Alexandria.) Without air cover, the MARG could find itself in real trouble.

And the big question, lurking in the back of his mind and he had no doubt in Roberts’ as well, was the Soviets. Their Mediterranean fleet, like a rogue queen on a chessboard, inhibited the use of American force. Especially now, with the inexplicable increase. Some day, if this continued, the Sixth Fleet would attempt intervention in support of America’s allies, and the Russians, moving in support of theirs, would say, very quietly, “Check.”

The thought made him shiver. He had no idea what would happen then. He pulled his bathrobe around him, adjusted the lamp, and bent to the map, trying to see it objectively, tactically, as the commander of an amphibious task force should see a beach.

The best landing areas were on the southern coast. Lenson had recommended Larnaca. Sundstrom found it in the southeast, on a shallow bay. Behind a wide stretch of beach the land was flat for ten miles, then began a slow rise. The principal road ran back and forth across a hill range. Not too bad, maybe … the alternative was a road to the west, cutting across country. Still, it would be worth keeping in mind.

Christ, he thought, but which one is better? The direct one—but any enemy would expect them to use that. The indirect one, but—

For a moment he considered calling Haynes. The colonel knew land fighting; he knew terrain and the capabilities of his troops. Nominally the task-force commander was in charge of all aspects of an assault, but Sundstrom had no idea what marines did ashore. He trusted Haynes, so far anyway. His hand hovered near the phone, then dropped to the desk. He would get to him first thing in the morning.

His mind moved off the map, into the blue that ringed the green and tan of the island. That was another world, and another set of worries. Could he get the MAU ashore, if he got the word to go? The weather worried him. The seas were building, barometer still dropping at last report, and Fleet Weather was not optimistic about an early clearing. The rain and wind he did not care about, except as they impacted helo operations. The rough part would be carrying out a landing in heavy surf. He might still be a tyro at this amphib work, but the exercises had taught him how critical surf conditions were in those all-important first hours. The LCM-6s, LCM-8s, LVTs, and LCUs all had different characteristics. Each step downward in size increased their vulnerability to broach and capsize. At the same time, if he sent in only the largest craft the movement ashore would be intolerably slow—days instead of hours.

And once they started ashore, he’d be committed. A landing could not stop halfway. He would have to continue, even if the weather degenerated beyond the safe point.

Another worry occurred to him. Byrne. What had he meant in the briefing today, bringing up Lebanon? He almost wished he had let him go on. But no, he thought, that was rambling, just hot air, just ostentation. The man had nothing to offer.

No, there was no way to solve this in advance. He would have to ad-hoc it. He hated doing that, postponing the planning process. He hated to depend on things he could not influence—weather, the orders of higher authority, the decisions of unknown men ashore. On the whim of chance. Once the operation began he would have to make decisions in seconds, without adequate information, without proper staff support.

Yet he, the commander, would still be responsible for success or failure, measured by a yardstick of human lives.

Ike Sundstrom had never enjoyed responsibility. He had heard those above him, the golden ones, say they enjoyed it. He did not believe them. He had never found it other than a worry and a burden. Fortunately, up to now he had always found someone above him more than willing to assume it for him. For that was the way of the bureaucracy the peacetime Navy had become.

He switched off the lights and climbed back into the bunk. Lying in the darkness, he wondered if he should reach for the telephone. The corpsman could bring him something to make him sleep.

But then it would be all over the ship the next morning. No. He did not intend giving them ammunition like that. He would be cautious; he would keep himself in check. No more snap decisions, like the Quickdraw mistake. He had to bear down, concentrate, and lead. He had to make up for all the inefficiency, the slackness, the plotting against him. He had to do it alone.

My head is on the block, he thought.

He saw himself midway on a ladder reaching from obscurity to power. He had climbed it tenaciously and without joy for over twenty years, without love, without laughter. He had never laughed at the idea of a career. It would take all he had, and all he could do. He knew that. He accepted that.

But I’m scared.

Commodore Isaac I. Sundstrom turned on his side, anchoring himself against the roll with an outstretched arm. Staring into the darkness, he waited rigidly for the dawn.