During the night the wind increased. Dawn broke gray and lifeless, gradually illuminating lowering clouds over a ragged formation. Task Force 61 was no longer a unit, a uniform, compact body of steel. Instead it was scattered individuals, each struggling to maintain course into twenty-foot seas.
The rain that lashed at his face was surprisingly cold. Wind snapped at the collar of his foul-weather jacket as Lenson, on Guam’s bridge wing, raised his glasses to search for Barnstable County. He found her at last, far astern. Smallest of the amphibious ships, built shallow-draft for beaching, the LST was making heavy weather. From twelve thousand yards away he shivered to see her horned bow dip as if to gore an oncoming sea. It boarded green and leapt foaming along her foredeck, shooting spray high as her bridge. But then she lifted, shaking off the water, and his heart rose too as she steadied herself for the next line of seas that marched in from the east.
He hunched to mop water from his binoculars, and looked next for Bowen. The frigate was hidden for long seconds by the swells but at last he caught her, tossing a wavering streamer of white as she rose on a crest. It would be no fun aboard her, either. His attention moved round the ragged ring of warships. Coronado was riding well, her higher freeboard keeping her decks dry save for rain. Newport, making as heavy a time of it as her sister LST. Charleston and Spiegel Grove both looked good. The attack transport moved behind the trailing skirts of a squall as he watched, and a few minutes later the wail of her foghorn came faintly across the wind.
He turned, and searched the horizon astern for Ault, their crippled duckling. Captain Foster had reported the propulsion casualty at 0330. Sundstrom had reluctantly given him permission to slow as necessary for repairs. Since the MARG was simply maintaining station, running legs west and east while waiting for orders, they would find her again on the next westerly course, later in the day.
As he had expected, she wasn’t in sight. Christ, he thought, I hope she catches back up; we’ll need those six guns if we go in … something else about her absence gnawed at his mind. Something else was missing too … he made another quick sweep, identified all the ships. But still the feeling nagged. He rubbed salt spray into morning stubble, hard, and the sting woke him a little. He tried to squeeze whatever it was out of his brain. Nothing came. Coffee … he wanted caffeine with all his soul, but with the commodore in the state he was in he didn’t dare send a petty officer below. No, he had to stay awake by pure will, and frequent trips to the wing to lash his face with cold spray.
Was it possible, in seas like this, that they would be ordered to land? He felt divided between eagerness and fear. The eagerness, because this was their reason for being: to put the troops ashore. The fear because they would have to do it under so many handicaps. The sea. The impending war. And of course, Sundstrom.
But if we do, and pull it off, he thought, that would be a coup for everyone involved. Maybe even wipe out the stain of the Ryan. He felt guilty thinking of it that way. But there it was, and it was why he’d volunteered for sea duty again after the disaster.
Nodding into the wind, he slid off into remembrance of a warm bed, warm sheets, the softness of a loving body.…
“Lieutenant,” said Stan Glazer, from the wing door.
“Yuh!” He opened his eyes behind the eyepieces, frightened at himself; he had almost been asleep.
“You better get in here. They’re calling us on HF.”
He jumped for the hatch that Glazer held open against the roll. He had never used the red phone before. The high-frequency command net was for FLASH-precedence traffic, where seconds counted. A speaker above his head made it audible to everyone on the bridge. As he wiped sea from his face and picked up the handset, the distant whine of atmospheric static sent a thrill along his spine.
“Denver George, Denver George, this is True Dream, True Dream. Over.”
“True Dream, this is Denver George, over,” he said rapidly. To Glazer he muttered, “Stan, get the commodore up here right away. And Flasher, too.”
“Right.”
“This is True Dream Actual,” said the distant voice, calm over the hiss and scream. “Is Denver George Actual on this net?”
“Denver George Actual on the way up, sir. Over.”
“Will stand by for him. True Dream out.”
“Denver George out,” said Lenson, but at that moment Sundstrom took the handset from him. He had come up from behind, fast and noiseless in stocking feet.
“True—what is it?” he said.
“True Dream, sir. We’re Denver George.”
“I know that!—True Dream, this is Denver George Actual. Hello, Tony!”
“Hello, Ike,” said the distant voice. “Can you copy me all right?”
“Loud and clear, Admiral,” said Sundstrom. His demeanor had changed the moment he picked up the handset, his voice going crisp, his back straightening. Behind him, Lenson smiled at Red Flasher, who was tucking his shirt around his gut. He looked like he had just rolled out of his rack. Flasher nodded back, but for once he didn’t grin.
“I’ll make this brief, Ike, because there’s a message en route, but I wanted to get you the word as fast as I could. Two developments. First, we’ve got some word from the authorities in Nicosia. About the hostages. They’re being moved.”
“Oh shit,” muttered Flasher.
Sundstrom shot him a look of mortal warning. “Moved, Admiral?” he said into the handset.
“Right. We have a tentative ident on the terrorists as a PLO splinter.”
“Uh-oh.”
“Uh oh is right. They’ve demanded a plane. TWA or El Al. They want it at 0800. So they may be out of Cyprus before you can land.”
“What’s their destination, sir?”
“They won’t say, Ike, but the jet they want could get them to Teheran. Or any place in the Med, basically. I’m putting up a radar bird to track it. We’ll know when they set down. But for the moment, all I can say is, keep it hard; we may need you fast, or we may not need you at all.”
“Understood, sir, and I want to assure you that TF 61 is ready now.”
“Good … also, we’ve got names on the hostages. Mixed bag, U.S., Brits. One’s a military dependent, appears to be one of your men. I forget the name, but it’s in the message that’s going out to you now.”
“Yes sir.”
“Okay. Second development: This weather is putting a crimp in our reconnaissance assets, but we’ve spotted the Turkish invasion force. They’ve jogged south, a little over a hundred miles northeast of your last reported position.”
“Yes sir,” said Sundstrom, and Lenson watched his head hunch into his shoulders.
“What’s your heading, Ike?”
“Zero-nine-zero, sir.”
“How are the seas? Can you get your formation around?”
“State four, bow on. I think I can get them around, though.”
“Good. Open the Turks as far as you can while staying within range of your original objective.”
“Aye, sir.”
A sudden roar of water beat against the windows. The squall. Lenson missed the next few words as he flicked on the wipers. They flailed against the rain, motors whining. For a moment the glass cleared; he saw Coronado lifting her stern far ahead, and then the world dissolved again into a solid wall of rain.
“We don’t anticipate your meeting them. Our guess is they’ll turn north again shortly for a landing near Famagusta. What we’re worried about here, though, is the Greek air force. They may try for a strike. And the Turkish air may be out trying to preempt.”
It could be war, all right, Lenson thought. Between two NATO allies. They had clashed before. And with the ships of the task force, and the hostages, caught squarely in the middle.
Sundstrom seemed to be thinking the same thing. “Can you give us air cover, Tony?” he was asking.
“I’m trying, Ike, but basically we want to keep the heavies out of this,” said the distant voice. Lenson caught the implication: America and her nuclear-powered escorts were too valuable to risk. “Consider this a Warning Yellow, threat axis three-zero-zero. I want your units ready to defend themselves, Commodore. A direct flight path from the Greek airfields to the Turkish force passes right over you. A mistake in identification could have serious consequences.”
“I understand,” said Sundstrom. “You know, sir, we have only one escort with us. That’s not much in the way of air defense.”
“One? My plot shows you have two. Bowen and Ault.”
“Yes sir. Well, Admiral, Ault’s reported some engine trouble. She may not be able to keep up with us.”
“What’s wrong with her? Well, never mind, I’ll look at the casualty report. I’ll try to get you cover. Maybe the Air Force has something available. If you see aircraft don’t get panicky. They may be ours. If they’re not, rules of engagement follow in hard copy.”
And Lenson, leaning against the rain-smeared scope, felt fear stir beneath the weariness. No air cover. He could read that behind the admiral’s half-promises. At this range Air Force fighters would be able to stay half an hour, no more. Hardly worth sending. They were on their own.
“Any questions, Commodore?”
“One, Admiral,” said Sundstrom. “If they don’t leave the island—or if they land somewhere within range—do you plan to send us in?”
“We’re in touch with the War Room, Ike,” said the distant voice, taking on its own hard edge. A crackle of static sounded like gunfire, as if it were the distant admiral who was on the front line, and not the swaying, rain-lashed ships. “We’re getting guidance direct from the top on this one. I’ll let you know. Meanwhile, stand by. True Dream, out.”
“Denver George, out,” said Sundstrom, and let up on the button. His arm sagged, holding the handset, and Lenson took it from his hand and hung it up. The commodore looked out forward for a moment, over the rainswept gray and painted circles of the flight deck, to where Barnstable County rolled like a pig in mud on the horizon. The squall had cleared as abruptly as it had begun, fallen astern. But they would meet it again as soon as they turned.
The squall … Dan wished suddenly for a real storm, a hurricane, an engulfment. The blanket of cloud and rain was suddenly comforting. Rain would give them some cover.
“Jesus Christ,” Sundstrom said, to no one in particular.
“Sir?” said Flasher. “Any orders?”
“They’re going to leave me dangling out here,” said Sundstrom, his voice low. “Jesus Christ! Tony’s going to let me go down the drain. It’ll be the Pueblo all over again!”
“Want us to come around, sir?” said Lenson. “He said—”
“I heard him, goddamnit,” said Sundstrom, the uncertainty instantly replaced by anger. “Are you trying to tell me my job, too? Well, forget it. Roberts wants to see me fumble; you all want to see me drop the ball. Well, I’ve got the bubble; I’ve been in deeper kimchee than you can imagine and come up smelling like a rose. Let’s get these people around, right now!”
“Aye, sir.”
The ships acknowledged the order by radio, doubt in their voices. One by one, waiting for lulls, they put their helms over and came about. Lenson watched Newport hesitate, waiting for a heavy sea to pass, and then lean into the turn. She was three-quarters of the way through it when a secondary system caught her on the quarter and pooped her. Green water foamed and spumed along her exposed deck, as if she were sinking stern first. Through the binoculars he could see the aft lookout running for shelter, jerking his phone cord behind him. The little ship hesitated, as if deciding whether to broach; then diesel exhaust burst from her funnels and she straightened, taking the next sea from directly astern. For a moment, staring out at her, he almost remembered the thing he had sensed at dawn; but as he groped for it the memory slipped back into the fog of fatigue. A spatter of rain blurred the little ship from sight.
“Goddamn weather,” said the commodore, watching her too. “How they can expect us to land in this is beyond me. Well, maybe we’ll get lucky and those bastards will fly to Iran.”
Lenson stared at him. He couldn’t believe the man had said that. That would mean another humiliating crisis, one that could drag on and on … “Commodore,” he said then, remembering, “hadn’t we better get the word out? About the readiness condition?”
“Of course, Dan. I told you that already. Antiair Warning Yellow, and all units at Condition One.”
“General quarters, sir?”
“That’s what I said. Right now.”
“Sir, we don’t need—Yellow doesn’t require—”
He saw the coming anger on Sundstrom’s face, and said quickly, forestalling it, “Aye, sir. General quarters,” and reached for the handset.
They spent the rest of the morning at GQ. At noon Sundstrom grudgingly gave permission for Flasher to take over the watch. Lenson paused aft of the bridge, bracing himself. Guam’s motion was different on this heading. With the seas astern she heaved herself up with each wave, digging her bow into the troughs like a man scooping hard ice cream. When it steadied for a moment he slid down the ladder.
In the supporting arms center McQueen and Byrne and Glazer were slumped in their chairs, eyes closed. The N-2 turned his head as Lenson dogged the hatch behind him.
“Hey, Jack,” he said.
“Dan.”
“What’s wrong?” Something in the way Byrne stared at him made him pause for a moment inside the door.
“Oh. Nothing … what’s going on topside? We don’t belong down here. We’re ninety miles offshore.”
“I know that, and you know that, Jack, but he doesn’t. He’s got the whole formation standing to.”
“What for? Oh—the Greek Air Force. But why are we manned up in SACC? We can’t do any good down here,” said Glazer.
“Brilliant deduction,” said Lenson. He dropped into his chair and reached for his headset, too tired to argue.
Cyprus covered the bulkhead in front of him, red and yellow and brown, writhing with roads, indented with bays. His eye went directly to the southern coast. McQueen had taped in the beach blowup, and he had drawn in approach lanes and drop points himself the night before. Now, he thought bitterly, it was all wasted. Where would these faceless terrorists take their victims next? The ship tilted in a corkscrew, and a handset clattered to the deck.
“Jack—you get all the hot gouge the same time Sundstrom does. Have you heard anything more about the embassy?”
“Well, a little.” Byrne pulled off his aviator glasses and rubbed his eyes. Again Dan caught that hesitation, as if the intel officer was stalling to think through his words. “They’re moving out, all right. Might even be for the best. There’s a lot of firing reported from the city. The UN peacekeeping team pulled out last night; New York felt they were too small to be effective anymore.”
“Anything about the hostages?”
“Ah … nothing new. Just that there’s about a hundred of them, mostly U.S. and British.”
“Who’s holding them, sir?” asked McQueen.
“That we don’t know yet, exactly,” said Byrne, rubbing the bridge of his long nose and sounding very tired, “though we can guess from their demands.”
“What do they want?”
“The usual stuff … remember the guys the Turks caught heading home after the bombing in Germany? They want them released. So it’s probably the same group. They’re covert; we don’t know too much about them, other than that their leader, guy who calls himself ‘the Majd,’ was implicated in the synagogue massacre in London last year. But it’s terrorist theater, standard procedure: The point is less to actually achieve a stated goal than to humiliate us, demonstrate our impotence, delaminate us from our allies, et cetera.”
Once again, Lenson was glad Susan and Nan were safe back in Athens. “You think we’ll release them? The prisoners?” he asked Byrne.
“They aren’t ours, they’re the Turks’. We can’t do a thing but ask them. And they don’t play patty-cake with bad guys. Those are tough bastards, Dan. I’ve seen them execute their own crewmen. Firing squads, on the fantails of their ships. They hold this little religious service, they shoot the guy, he falls overboard. That’s it. Not a lot of concern for what the other ships in formation think about it. No, I don’t think we’re going to talk the Turks out of much. Plus, they’re tied up in Cyprus now—oh, it’s masterly timing.”
“You think we should have put the MAU ashore, then?” asked Glazer.
“If we could have done it that would have been the best way,” said the N-2. “But I guess it’s a missed chance. We’ll be twisting in the wind for months on this one.”
“SACC, flag bridge,” said the squawk box, in Sundstrom’s voice. “Dan, are you down there?”
“Yes sir.”
“Let’s get some drills going, as long as you’re on station. Bring the other ships up on the net, get some comm drills going. I want us to be on stream, ready for any eventuality.”
“Aye aye, sir,” said Lenson. The intercom clicked off. The other officers glanced at each other, rolling their eyes. He ignored them, pulling out a call for fire form. They could laugh, they could be sarcastic, even—in spite of one of the oldest rules in the Navy—in front of an enlisted man.
He would not. He would do his duty, despite fatigue, despite everything. No matter how silly or meaningless things seemed to him, he had to believe that Sundstrom knew what he was doing, that he was right. It did not matter, he told himself fiercely, what he or anyone thought of their commander. Because in the last analysis, if there was not obedience, and respect as well, then this ship, and this squadron, and the Navy, were lost.
Suddenly his pen stopped moving. He sat up.
“Dan? What is it?”
“I just remembered.”
“What?”
“That tattletale,” he said. “The Russian. Snoopy.”
“What about him?”
“He’s gone. He left the formation during the night.”
“What’s that mean, sir?” said McQueen.
“Nothing,” said Lenson slowly, staring at the map. “Nothing … I hope. Come on, let’s start the drill.”