27
Insertion
Phase One of Operation BOXWOOD GREEN began just before dawn. The carrier USS Constellation reversed her southerly course at the transmission of a single code word. Two cruisers and six destroyers matched her turn to port, and the handles on nine different sets of engine-room enunciators were pushed down to the FULL setting. All of the various ships’ boilers were fully on line already, and as the warships heeled to starboard, they also started accelerating. The maneuver caught the Russian AGI crew by surprise. They’d expected Connie to turn the other way, into the wind to commence flight operations, but unknown to them the carrier was standing down this morning and racing northeast. The intelligence-gathering trawler also altered course, increasing power on her own in the vain hope of soon catching up with the carrier task force. That left Ogden with two Adams-class missile-destroyer escorts, a sensible precaution after what had so recently happened to USS Pueblo off the Korean coast.
Captain Franks watched the Russian ship disappear an hour later. Two more hours passed, just to be sure. At eight that morning a pair of AH-1 Huey Cobras completed their lonely overwater flight from the Marine air base at Danang, landing on Ogden’s ample flight deck. The Russians might have wondered about the presence of two attack helicopters on the ship which, their intelligence reports confidently told them, was on an electronic-intelligence mission not unlike their own. Maintenance men already aboard immediately wheeled the “snakes” to a sheltered spot and began a complete maintenance check which would verify the condition of every component. Members of Ogden’s crew lit up their own machine shop, and skilled chief machinist’s mates offered everything they had to the new arrivals. They were still not briefed on the mission, but it was clear now that something most unusual indeed was under way. The time for questioning was over. Whatever the hell it was, every resource of their ship was made available even before officers troubled themselves to relay that order to their various divisions. Cobra gunships meant action, and every man aboard knew they were a hell of a lot closer to North Vietnam than South. Speculation was running wild, but not that wild. They had a spook team aboard, then Marines, now gunships, and more helicopters would land this afternoon. The Navy medical corpsmen aboard were told to open up the ship’s hospital spaces for new arrivals.
“We’re going to raid the fuckers,” a bosun’s mate third observed to his chief.
“Don’t spread that one around,” the twenty-eight-year veteran growled back.
“Who the fuck am I gonna tell, Boats? Hey, man, I’m for it, okay?”
What is my Navy coming to? the veteran of Leyte Gulf asked himself.
“You, you, you,” the junior man called, pointing to some new seamen. “Let’s do a FOD walkdown.” That started a detailed examination of the flight deck, searching for any object that might get sucked into an engine intake. He turned back to the bosun. “With your permission, Boats.”
“Carry on.” College boys, the senior chief thought, avoiding the draft.
“And if I see anybody smoking out here, I’ll tear him a new asshole!” the salty third-class told the new kids.
But the real action was in officers’ country.
“A lot of routine stuff,” the intelligence officer told his visitors.
“We’ve been working on their phone systems lately,” Podulski explained. “It makes them use radios more.”
“Clever,” Kelly noted. “Traffic from the objective?”
“Some, and one last night was in Russian.”
“That’s the indicator we want!” the Admiral said at once. There was only one reason for a Russian to be at SENDER GREEN. “I hope we get that son of a bitch!”
“Sir,” Albie promised with a smile, “if he’s there, he’s got.”
Demeanors had changed again. Rested now, and close to the objective, thoughts turned away from abstract dread and back into focus on the hard facts of the matter. Confidence had returned—leavened with caution and concern, but they had trained for this. They were now thinking of the things that would go right.
The latest set of photos had come aboard, taken by an RA-5 Vigilante that had screamed low over no less than three SAM sites to cover its interest in a minor and secret place. Kelly lifted the blowups.
“Still people in the towers.”
“Guarding something,” Albie agreed.
“No changes I see,” Kelly went on. “Only one car. No trucks . . . nothing much in the immediate area. Gentlemen, it looks pretty normal to me.”
“Connie will hold position forty miles off seaward. The medics cross-deck today. The command team arrives tomorrow, and the next day—” Franks looked across the table.
“I go swimming,” Kelly said.
The film cassette sat, undeveloped, in a safe in the office of a section chief of the KGB’s Washington Station, in turn part of the Soviet Embassy, just a few blocks up 16th Street from the White House. Once the palatial home of George Mortimer Pullman—it had been purchased by the government of Nikolay II-it contained both the second-oldest elevator and the largest espionage operation in the city. The volume of material generated by over a hundred trained field officers meant that not all the information that came in through the door was processed locally, and Captain Yegorov was sufficiently junior that his section chief didn’t deem his information worthy of inspection. The cassette finally went into a small manila envelope which was sealed with wax, then found its way into the awkward canvas bag of a diplomatic courier who boarded a flight to Paris, flying first class courtesy of Air France. At Orly, eight hours later, the courier walked to catch an Aeroflot jet to Moscow, which developed into three and a half hours of pleasant conversation with a KGB security officer who was his official escort for this part of the journey. In addition to his official duties, the courier did quite well for himself by purchasing various consumer goods on his regular trips west. The current item of choice was pantyhose, two pairs of which went to the KGB escort.
Upon arriving in Moscow and walking past customs control, the waiting car took him into the city, where the first stop was not the Foreign Ministry, but KGB Headquarters at #2 Dzerzhinskiy Square. More than half the contents of the diplomatic pouch were handed over there, which included most of the flat pantyhose packages. Two more hours allowed the courier to find his family flat, a bottle of vodka, and some needed sleep.
The cassette landed on the desk of a KGB major. The identification chit told him which of his field force had originated it, and the desk officer filled out a form of his own, then called a subordinate to convey it to the photo lab for development. The lab, while large, was also quite busy today, and he’d have to wait a day, perhaps two, his lieutenant told him on returning. The Major nodded. Yegorov was a new though promising field officer, and was starting to develop an agent with interesting legislative connections, but it was expected that it would be a while before CASSIUS turned over anything of great importance.
Raymond Brown left the University of Pittsburgh Medical School struggling not to quiver with anger after their first visit to Dr. Bryant. It had actually gone quite well. Doris had explained many of the events of the preceding three years with a forthright if brittle voice, and throughout he’d held her hand to lend support, both physical and moral. Raymond Brown actually blamed himself for everything that had happened to his daughter. If only he’d controlled his temper that Friday night so long before—but he hadn’t. It was done. He couldn’t change things. He’d been a different person then. Now he was older and wiser, and so he controlled his rage on the walk to the car. This process was about the future, not the past. The psychiatrist had been very clear about that. He was determined to follow her guidance on everything.
Father and daughter had dinner at a quiet family restaurant—he’ d never learned to cook well—and talked about the neighborhood, which of Doris’s childhood friends were doing what, in a gentle exercise at catching up on things. Raymond kept his voice low, telling himself to smile a lot and let Doris do most of the talking. Every so often her voice would slow, and the hurt look would reappear. That was his cue to change the subject, to say something nice about her appearance, maybe relate a story from the shop. Most of all he had to be strong and steady for her. Over the ninety minutes of their first session with the doctor, he’d learned that the things he’d feared for three years had indeed come to pass, and somehow he knew that other things as yet unspoken were even worse. He would have to tap on undiscovered resources to keep his anger in, but his little girl needed him to be a—a rock, he told himself. A great big rock that she could hold on to, as solid as the hills on which his city was built. She needed other things, too. She needed to rediscover God. The doctor had agreed with him about it, and Ray Brown was going to take care of it, with the help of his pastor, he promised himself, staring into his little girl’s eyes.
It was good to be back at work. Sandy was running her floor again, her two-week absence written off by Sam Rosen as a special-duty assignment, which his status as a department chairman guaranteed would pass without question. The post-op patients were the usual collection of major and minor cases. Sandy’s team organized and managed their care. Two of her fellow nurses asked a few questions about her absence. She answered merely by saying she’d done a special research project for Dr. Rosen, and that was enough, especially with a full and busy patient load. The other members of the nursing team saw that she was somewhat distracted. There was a distant look in her eyes from time to time, her thoughts elsewhere, dwelling on something. They didn’t know what. Perhaps a man, they all hoped, glad to have the team leader back. Sandy was better at handling the surgeons than anyone else on the service, and with Professor Rosen backing her up, it made for a comfortable routine.
“So, you replace Billy and Rick yet?” Morello asked.
“That’ll take a while, Eddie,” Henry replied. “This is going to mess up our deliveries.”
“Aw, crap! You got that too complicated anyway.”
“Back off, Eddie,” Tony Piaggi said. “Henry has a good routine set up. It’s safe and it works—”
“And it’s too complicated. Who’s gonna take care of Philadelphia now?” Morello demanded.
“We’re working on that,” Tony answered.
“All you’re doing is dropping the stuff off and collecting the money, for Crissake! They’re not going to rip anybody off, we’re dealing with business people, remember?” Not street niggers, he had the good sense not to add. That part of the message got across anyway. No offense, Henry.
Piaggi refilled the wineglasses. It was a gesture Morello found both patronizing and irritating.
“Look,” Morello said, leaning forward. “I helped set up this deal, remember? You might not even be starting with Philly yet if it wasn’t for me.”
“What are you saying, Eddie?”
“I’ll make your damn delivery while Henry gets his shit back together. How hard is it? Shit, you got broads doing it for you!” Show a little panache, Morello thought, show them I have what it takes. Hell, at least he’d show the guys in Philly, and maybe they could do for him what Tony wouldn’t do. Yeah.
“Sure you want to take the chance, Eddie?” Henry asked with an inward smile. This wop was so easy to predict.
“Fuck, yeah.”
“Okay,” Tony said with a display of being impressed. “You make the call and set it up.” Henry was right, Piaggi told himself. It had been Eddie all along, making his own move. How foolish. How easily dealt with.
“Still nothing,” Emmet Ryan said, summarizing the Invisible Man Case. “All this evidence—and nothing.”
“Only thing that makes sense, Em, is somebody was making a move.” Murders didn’t just start and stop. There had to be a reason. The reason might be hard, even impossible to discover in many cases, but an organized and careful series of murders was a different story. It came down to two possibilities. One was that someone had launched a series of killings to cover the real target. That target had to be William Grayson, who had dropped from the face of the earth, probably never to return alive, and whose body might someday be discovered—or not. Somebody very angry about something, very careful, and very skilled, and that somebody—the Invisible Man—had taken it to that point and stopped there.
How likely was that? Ryan asked himself. The answer was impossible to evaluate, but somehow the start-stop sequence seemed far too arbitrary. Far too much buildup for a single, seemingly inconsequential target. Whatever Grayson had been, he hadn’t been the boss of anyone’s organization, and if the murders had been a planned sequence, his death simply was not a logical stopping place. At least, Ryan frowned, that was what his instincts told him. He’d learned to trust those undefined inner feelings, as all cops do. And yet the killings had stopped. Three more pushers had died in the last few weeks; he and Douglas had visited every crime scene only to find that they’d been two quite ordinary robberies gone bad, with the third a turf fight that one had lost and another won. The Invisible Man was gone, or at least inactive, and that fact blew away the theory which had to him seemed the most sensible explanation for the killings, leaving only something far less satisfying.
The other possibility did make more sense, after a fashion. Someone had made a move on a drug ring as yet undiscovered by Mark Charon and his squad, eliminating pushers, doubtless encouraging them to switch allegiance to a new supplier. Under that construction, William Grayson had been somewhat more important in the great scheme of things—and perhaps there was another murder or two, as yet undiscovered, which had eliminated the command leadership of this notional ring. One more leap of imagination told Ryan that the ring taken down by the Invisible Man was the same he and Douglas had been chasing after, lo these many months. It all tied together in a very neat theoretical bundle.
But murders rarely did that. Real murder wasn’t like a TV cop show. You never figured it all out. When you knew who, you might never really learn why, at least not in a way that really satisfied, and the problem with applying elegant theories to the real-life fact of death was that people didn’t fit theories terribly well. Moreover, even if that model for the events of the past month were correct, it had to mean that a highly organized, ruthless, and deadly-efficient individual was now operating a criminal enterprise in Ryan’s city, which wasn’t exactly good news.
“Tom, I just don’t buy it.”
“Well, if he’s your commando, why did he stop?” Douglas asked.
“Do I remember right? Aren’t you the guy who came up with that idea?”
“Yeah, so?”
“So you’re not helping your lieutenant very much, Sergeant.”
“We have a nice weekend to think about it. Personally, I’m going to cut the grass and catch the double-header on Sunday, and pretend I’m just a regular citizen. Our friend is gone, Em. I don’t know where, but he might as well be on the other side of the world. Best guess, somebody from out of town who came here on a job, and he did the job, and now he’s gone.”
“Wait a minute!” That was a new theory entirely, a contract assassin right out of the movies, and those people simply did not exist. But Douglas just headed out of the office, ending the chance for a discussion that might have demonstrated that each of the detectives was half wrong and half right.
Weapons practice started under the watchful eyes of the command team, plus whatever sailors could find an excuse to come aft. The Marines told themselves that the two newly arrived admirals and the new CIA puke had to be as jet-lagged as they’d been upon arrival, not knowing that Maxwell, Greer, and Ritter had flown a VIP transport most of the way, taking the Pacific in easier hops, with drinks and comfortable seats.
Trash was tossed over the side, with the ship moving at a stately five knots. The Marines perforated the various blocks of wood and paper sacks in an exercise that was more a matter of entertainment for the crew than real training value. Kelly took his turn, controlling his CAR-15 with two- and three-round bursts, and hitting the target. When it was over the men safed their weapons and headed back to their quarters. A chief stopped Kelly as he was reentering the superstructure.
“You’re the guy going in alone?”
“You’re not supposed to know that.”
The chief machinist’s mate just chuckled. “Follow me, sir.” They headed forward, diverting from the Marine detail and finding themselves in Ogden’s impressive machine shop. It had to be impressive, as it was designed not merely to service the ship herself, but also the needs of whatever mobile equipment might be embarked. On one of the worktables, Kelly saw the sea sled he’d be using to head up the river.
“We’ve had this aboard since San Diego, sir. Our chief electrician and I been playing with it. We’ve stripped it down, cleaned everything, checked the batteries—they’re good ones, by the way. It’s got new seals, so it oughta keep the water out. We even tested it in the well deck. The guarantee says five hours. Deacon and I worked on it. It’s good for seven,” the chief said with quiet pride. “I figured that might come in handy.”
“It will, Chief. Thank you.”
“Now let’s see this gun.” Kelly handed it over after a moment’s hesitation, and the chief started taking it apart. In fifteen seconds it was field-stripped, but the chief didn’t stop there.
“Hold on!” Kelly snapped as the front-sight assembly came off.
“It’s too noisy, sir. You are going in alone, right?”
“Yes, I am.”
The machinist didn’t even look up. “You want me to quiet this baby down or do you like to advertise?”
“You can’t do that with a rifle.”
“Says who? How far you figure you have to shoot?”
“Not more than a hundred yards, probably not that much. Hell, I don’t even want to have to use it—”
“’Cuz it’s noisy, right?” The chief smiled. “You want to watch me, sir? You’re gonna learn something.”
The chief walked the barrel over to a drill press. The proper bit was already in place, and under the watchful eyes of Kelly and two petty officers he drilled a series of holes in the forward six inches of the hollow steel rod.
“Now, you can’t silence a supersonic bullet all the way, but what you can do is trap all the gas, and that’ll surely help.”
“Even for a high-power cartridge?”
“Gonzo, you all set up?”
“Yeah. Chief,” a second-class named Gonzales replied. The rifle barrel went onto a lathe, which cut a shallow but lengthy series of threads.
“I already got this made up.” The chief held up a can-type suppressor, fully three inches in diameter and fourteen inches long. It screwed nicely onto the end of the barrel. A gap in the can allowed reattachment of the front sights, which also locked the suppressor fully in place.
“How long did you work on this?”
“Three days, sir. When I looked over the arms we embarked, it wasn’t hard to figure what you might need, and I had the spare time. So I played around some.”
“But how the hell did you know I was going—”
“We’re exchanging signals with a sub. How hard is all that to figure out?”
“How did you know that?” Kelly demanded, knowing the answer even so.
“Ever know a ship that had secrets? Captain’s got a yeoman. Yeomen talk,” the machinist explained, completing the reassembly process. “It makes the weapon about six inches longer, I hope you don’t mind.”
Kelly shouldered the carbine. The balance was actually improved somewhat. He preferred a muzzle-heavy weapon since it made for better control.
“Very nice.” He had to try it out, of course. Kelly and the chief headed aft. Along the way the machinist got a discarded wooden box. On the fantail, Kelly slapped a full magazine into the carbine. The chief tossed the wood into the water and stepped back. Kelly shouldered the weapon and squeezed off his first round.
Pop. A moment later came the sound of the bullet hitting the wood, actually somewhat louder than the report of the cartridge. He’d also distinctly heard the working of the bolt mechanism. This chief machinist’s mate had done for a high-powered rifle what Kelly himself had done for a .22 pistol. The master craftsman smiled benignly.
“The only hard part’s making sure there’s enough gas to work the bolt. Try it full auto, sir.”
Kelly did that, rippling off six rounds. It still sounded like gunfire, but the actual noise generated was reduced by at least ninety-five percent, and that meant that no one could hear it beyond a couple hundred yards—as opposed to over a thousand for a normal rifle.
“Good job, Chief.”
“Whatever you’re up to, sir, you be careful, hear?” the chief suggested, walking off without another word.
“You bet,” Kelly told the water. He hefted the weapon a little more, and emptied the magazine at the wood before it grew too far off. The bullets converted the wooden box into splinters to the accompaniment of small white fountains of seawater.
You’re ready, John.
So was the weather, he learned a few minutes later. Perhaps the world’s most sophisticated weather-prediction service operated to support air operations over Vietnam—not that the pilots really appreciated or acknowledged it. The senior meteorologist had come across from Constellation with the admirals. He moved his hands across a chart of isobars and the latest satellite photo.
“The showers start tomorrow, and we can expect rain on and off for the next four days. Some heavy stuff. It’ll go on until this slow-moving low-pressure area slides up north into China,” the chief petty officer told them.
All of the officers were there. The four flight crews assigned to the mission evaluated this news soberly. Flying a helicopter in heavy weather wasn’t exactly fun, and no aviator liked the idea of reduced visibility. But falling rain would also muffle the noise of the aircraft, and reduced visibility worked both ways. The main hazard that concerned them was light antiaircraft guns. Those were optically aimed, and anything that hindered the ability of the crews to hear and see their aircraft made for safety.
“Max winds?” a Cobra pilot asked.
“At worst, gusts to thirty-five or forty knots. It will be a little bumpy aloft, sir.”
“Our main search radar is pretty good for weather surveillance. We can steer you around the worst of it,” Captain Franks offered. The pilots nodded.
“Mr. Clark?” Admiral Greer asked.
“Rain sounds good to me. The only way they can spot me on the inbound leg is the bubbles I leave on the surface of the river. Rain’ll break that up. It means I can move in daylight if I have to.” Kelly paused, knowing that to go on would merely make the final commitment. “Skate ready for me?”
“Whenever we say so,” Maxwell answered.
“Then it’s ‘go-mission’ on my end, sir.” Kelly could feel his skin go cold. It seemed to contract around his entire body, making him seem smaller somehow. But he’d said it anyway.
Eyes turned to Captain Albie, USMC. A vice admiral, two rear admirals, and an up-and-coming CIA field officer now depended on this young Marine to make the final decision. He would take the main force in. His was the ultimate operational responsibility. It seemed very strange indeed to the young captain that seven stars needed him to say “go,” but twenty-five Marines and perhaps twenty others had their lives riding on his judgment. It was his mission to lead, and it had to be exactly right the first time. He looked over at Kelly and smiled.
“Mr. Clark, sir, you be real careful. I think it’s time for your swim. This mission is ‘go.’ ”
There was no exultation. In fact, every man around the chart table looked down at the maps, trying to convert the two-dimensional ink on paper into three-dimensional reality. Then the eyes came up, almost simultaneously, and each pair read all the others. Maxwell spoke first to one of the helicopter crews.
“I guess you’d better get your helo warmed up.” Maxwell turned. “Captain Franks, would you signal Skate?” Two crisp aye aye, sirs answered him, and the men stood erect, stepping back from the chart and their decision.
It was a little late for the sober pause, Kelly told himself. He put his fear aside as best he could and started focusing his mind on twenty men. It seemed so strange to risk his life for people he hadn’t met, but then, risk of life wasn’t supposed to be rational. His father had spent a lifetime doing it, and had lost his life in the successful rescue of two children. If I can take pride in my dad, he told himself, then I can honor him hest in this way.
You can do it, man. You know how. He could feel the determination begin to take over. All the decisions were made. He was committed to action now. Kelly’s face took a hard set. Dangers were no longer things to be feared, but to be dealt with. To be overcome.
Maxwell saw it. He’d seen the same thing in ready rooms on carriers, fellow pilots going through the mental preparations necessary before you tossed the dice, and the Admiral remembered how it had been for him, the way the muscles tense, how your eyesight suddenly becomes very sharp. First in, last out, just as his mission had often been, flying his F6F Hellcat to eliminate fighters and then cover the attack aircraft all the way home. My second son, was what Dutch suddenly told himself, as brave as Sonny and just as smart. But he’d never sent Sonny into danger personally, and Dutch was far older than he’d been at Okinawa. Somehow danger assigned to others was larger and more horrid than that which you assumed for yourself. But it had to be this way, and Maxwell knew that Kelly trusted him, as he in his time had trusted Pete Mitscher. That burden was a heavy one, all the more because he had to see the face he was sending into enemy territory, alone. Kelly caught the look from Maxwell, and his face changed into a knowing grin.
“Don’t sweat it, sir.” He walked out of the compartment to pack up his gear.
“You know, Dutch”—Admiral Podulski lit up a cigarette—“ we could have used that lad, back a few years. I think he would have fit in just fine.” It was far more than a “few” years, but Maxwell knew the truth of the statement. They’d been young warriors once, and now was the time of the new generation.
“Cas, I just hope he’s careful.”
“He will be. Just like we were.”
The sea sled was wheeled out to the flight deck by the men who had prepared it. The helicopter was up and running now, its five-bladed rotor turning in the pre-dawn darkness as Kelly walked through the watertight door. He took a deep breath before striding out. He’d never had an audience like this before. Irvin was there, along with three of the other senior Marine NCOs, and Albie, and the flag officers, and the Ritter guy, seeing him off like he was goddamned Miss America or something. But it was the two Navy chiefs who came up to him.
“Batteries are fully charged. Your gear’s in the container. It’s watertight, so no problems there, sir. The rifle is loaded and chambered in case you need it in a hurry, safety on. New batteries for all the radios, and two sets of spares. If there’s anything else to do, I don’t know what it is,” the chief machinist’s mate shouted over the sound of the helicopter engines.
“Sounds good to me!” Kelly shouted back.
“Kick ass, Mr. Clark!”
“See you in a few—and thanks!” Kelly shook hands with the two chiefs, then went to see Captain Franks. For comic effect he stood at attention and saluted. “Permission to leave the ship, sir.”
Captain Franks returned it. “Permission granted, sir.”
Then Kelly looked at all the rest. First in, last out. A half smile and a nod were sufficient gestures for the moment, and at this moment they took their courage from him.
The big Sikorsky rescue chopper lifted off a few feet. A crewman attached the sled to the bottom of the helo, and then it headed aft, out of the burble turbulence of Ogden’s superstructure, flying off into the darkness without strobes and disappearing in a matter of seconds.
USS Skate was an old-fashioned submarine, modified and developed from the first nuclear boat, USS Nautilus. Her hull was shaped almost like that of a real ship rather than a whale, which made her relatively slow underwater, but her twin screws made for greater maneuverability, especially in shallow water. For years Skate had drawn the duty of inshore intelligence ship, creeping close to the Vietnamese coast and raising whip antennas to snoop on radar and other electronic emissions. She’d also put more than one swimmer on the beach. That included Kelly, several years before, though there was not a single member of that crew still aboard to remember his face. He saw her on the surface, a black shape darker than the water that glistened with the waning quarter moon soon to be hidden by clouds. The helicopter pilot first of all set the sled on Skate’s foredeck, where the sub’s crew secured it in place. Then Kelly and his personal gear were lowered by hoist. A minute later he was in the sub’s control room.
“Welcome aboard,” Commander Silvio Esteves said, anticipating his first swimmer mission. He was not yet through his first year in command.
“Thank you, sir. How long to the beach?”
“Six hours, more until we scope things out for you. Coffee? Food?”
“How about a bed, sir?”
“Spare bunk in the XO’s cabin. We’ll see you’re not disturbed.” Which was a better deal than that accorded the technicians aboard from the National Security Agency.
Kelly headed forward to the last real rest he’d have for the next three days—if things went according to plan. He was asleep before the submarine dived back under the waters of the South China Sea.
“This is interesting,” the Major said. He dropped the translation on the desk of his immediate superior, another major, but this one was on the Lieutenant Colonel’s list.
“I’ve heard about this place. GRU is running the operation—trying to, I mean. Our fraternal socialist allies are not cooperating very well. So the Americans know about it at last, eh?”
“Keep reading, Yuriy Petravich,” the junior man suggested.
“Indeed!” He looked up. “Who exactly is this CASSIUS fellow?” Yuriy had seen the name before, attached to a large quantity of minor information that had come through various sources within the American left.
“Glazov did the final recruitment only a short time ago.” The Major explained on for a minute or so.
“Well, I’ll take it to him, then. I’m surprised Georgiy Borissovich isn’t running the case personally.”
“I think he will now, Yuriy.”
They knew something bad was about to happen. North Vietnam had a multitude of search radars arrayed along its coast. Their main purpose was to provide raid warning for incoming strikes from the aircraft carriers the Americans had sailing on what they called Yankee Station, and the North Vietnamese called something else. Frequently the search radars were jammed, but not this badly. This time the jammer was so powerful as to turn the Russian-made screen into a circular mass of pure white. The operators leaned in more closely, looking for particularly bright dots that might denote real targets amid the jamming noise.
“Ship!” a voice called into the operations center. “Ship on the horizon.” It was yet another case where the human eye outperformed radar.
If they were dumb enough to put their radars and guns on hilltops, that wasn’t his lookout. The master chief firecontrolman was in “Spot I,” the forward fire-director tower that made the most graceful part of his ship’s profile. His eyes were glued to the eyepieces of the long-base rangefinders, designed in the late 1930s and still as fine a piece of optical gear as America had ever produced. His hand turned a small wheel, which operated not unlike the focusing mechanism of a camera, bringing a split-image together. His focus was on the radar antenna, whose metal framework, not protected now with camouflage netting, made a nearly perfect aiming reference.
“Mark!”
The firecontrolman 2/c next to him keyed the microphone, reading the numbers off the dial. “Range One-Five-Two-Five-Zero.”
In central fire-control, a hundred feet below Spot 1, mechanical computers accepted the data, telling the cruiser’s eight guns how much to elevate. What happened next was simple enough. Already loaded, the guns rotated with their turrets, coming up to the proper angle of elevation calculated a generation earlier by scores of young women—now grandmothers—on mechanical calculators. On the computer, the cruiser’s speed and course were already set, and since they were firing at a stationary target, it was assigned an identical but reversed velocity vector. In this way the guns would automatically remain locked on target.
“Commence firing,” the gunnery officer commanded. A young sailor closed the firing keys, and USS Newport News shook with the first salvo of the day.
“Okay, on azimuth, we’re short by . . . three hundred . . .” the master chief said quietly, watching the fountains of dirt in the twenty-power rangefinders.
“Up three hundred!” the talker relayed, and the next salvo thundered off fifteen seconds later. He didn’t know that the first salvo had inadvertently immolated the command bunker for the radar complex. The second salvo arced through the air. “This one does it,” the master chief whispered.
It did. Three of the eight rounds landed within fifty yards of the radar antenna and shredded it.
“On target,” he said over his own microphone, waiting for the dust to clear. “Target destroyed.”
“Beats an airplane any day,” the Captain said, observing from the bridge. He’d been a young gunnery officer on USS Mississippi twenty-five years earlier, and had learned shore-bombardment against live targets in the Western Pacific, as had his treasured master chief in Spot 1. This was sure to be the last hurrah for the Navy’s real gunships, and the Captain was determined that it would be a loud one.
A moment later some splashes appeared a thousand yards off. These would be from 130mm long guns the NVA used to annoy the Navy. He would engage them before concentrating on triple-A sites.
“Counterbattery!” the skipper called to central fire-control.
“Aye, sir, we’re on it.” A minute later Newport News shifted fire, her rapid-fire guns searching for and finding the six 130s that really should have known better.
It was a diversion, the Captain knew. It had to be. Something was happening somewhere else. He didn’t know what, but it had to be something good to allow him and his cruiser on the gunline north of the DMZ. Not that he minded, the CO said to himself, feeling his ship shudder yet again. Thirty seconds later a rapidly expanding orange cloud announced the demise of that gun battery.
“I got secondaries,” the CO announced. The bridge crew hooted briefly, then settled back down to work.
“There you are.” Captain Mason stepped back from the periscope.
“Pretty close.” Kelly needed only one look to see that Esteves was a cowboy. Skate was scraping off barnacles. The periscope was barely above water, the water lapping at the lower half of the lens. “I suppose that’ll do.”
“Good rainstorm topside,” Esteves said.
“ ‘Good’ is right.” Kelly finished off his coffee, the real Navy sort with salt thrown in. “I’m going to use it.”
“Right now?”
“Yes, sir.” Kelly nodded curtly. “Unless you plan to go in closer,” he added with a challenging grin.
“Unfortunately, we don’t have any wheels on the bottom or I might just try.” Esteves gestured him forward. “What’s this one about? I usually know.”
“Sir, I can’t say. Tell you this, though: if it works, you’ll find out.” That would have to do, and Esteves understood.
“Then you better get ready.”
As warm as the waters were, Kelly still had to worry about the cold. Eight hours in water with only a small temperature differential could sap the energy from his body like a short-circuited battery. He worked his way into a green-and-black neoprene wet suit, adding double the normal amount of weight belts. Alone in the executive officer’s stateroom, he had his last sober pause, beseeching God to help not himself, but the men whom he was trying to rescue. It seemed a strange thing to pray, Kelly thought, after what he’d done so recently yet so far away, and he took the time to ask forgiveness for anything wrong he might have done, still wondering if he had transgressed or not. It was a time for that sort of reflection, but only briefly. He had to look forward now. Maybe God would help him to rescue Colonel Zacharias, but he had to do his part, too. Kelly’s last thought before leaving the stateroom was of the photo of a lonely American about to be clubbed from behind by some little NVA fuck. It was time to put an end to that, he told himself, opening the door.
“Escape trunk’s this way,” Esteves said.
Kelly climbed up the ladder, watched by Esteves and perhaps six or seven other men of Skate.
“Make sure we find out,” the Captain said, levering the hatch shut himself.
“I’ll sure as hell try,” Kelly replied, just as the metal fitting locked into place. There was an aqualung waiting for him. The gauge read full, Kelly saw, checking it again himself. He lifted the waterproof phone.
“Clark here. In the trunk, ready to go.”
“Sonar reports nothing except heavy rain on the surface. Visual search is negative. Vaya con dios, Señor Clark.”
“Gracias, ” Kelly chuckled his reply. He replaced the phone and opened the flooding valve. Water entered the bottom of the compartment, the air pressure changing suddenly in the cramped space.
Kelly checked his watch. It was eight-sixteen when he cracked the hatch and pulled himself to the submerged foredeck of USS Skate. He used a light to illuminate the sea sled. It was tied down at four points, but before loosing it he clipped a safety line to his belt. It wouldn’t do to have the thing motor off without him. The depth gauge read forty-nine feet. The submarine was in dangerously shallow water, and the sooner he got away the sooner her crew would be safe again. Unclipping the sled, he flipped the power switch, and two shrouded propellers started turning slowly. Good. Kelly pulled the knife from his belt and banged it twice on the deck, then adjusted the flippers on the sled and headed off, on a compass course of three-zero-eight.
There was now no turning back, Kelly told himself. But for him there rarely was.
