When the army chief of staff, General Grey, arrived from the Pentagon and was ushered into the Oval Office by press aide Trainor, he wasn’t sure whether the president had heard him and so coughed politely to announce his presence.
The chief executive of the United States was reclining in the black leather chair behind the dark oak desk from HMS Resolute—given to the much earlier President Hayes by Queen Victoria in 1878, the great seal of the United States carved on its front adding to the quiet dignity of the office that General Grey found distinctly gloomy in the fading evening light. Outside, the darkening magnolia bushes and stark brambles of the rose garden added to the heavy, oppressive atmosphere that had descended about the White House since the news had come in from the big aerial arrays at Fort Meade in Maryland.
The ELINT — electronic intelligence — experts had picked up FORCOMPS — forward command post signals — between the U.S. and South Korean armies under the command of Gen. B. W. Anderson, supreme commander of all Allied forces in Southeast Asia. On top of this, Mayne was in the throes of a migraine attack — it being no consolation to him, as Trainor well knew, that other presidents, too, had been victims of disease while in office, that Ulysses S. Grant had suffered one of his worst migraine attacks the night before Lee’s surrender.
“Take a seat, General,” said Mayne, waving him in the gloom to the red-and-yellow-striped cushioned chair to the left of the president’s desk and directly in front of the presidential flag. As the general’s eyes adjusted to the dim light, he could see the president wasn’t looking directly at him but was deep in thought in the island of soft, peach-colored light casting its glow on the portrait of George Washington, in full uniform, above the mantel.
“I was told…” began the president, his voice quiet, measured. “Your intelligence boys told me Beijing couldn’t do— what they’ve now done?” Mayne’s right arm came into view indicating the map of the “big prick,” as the Pentagon called the Korean Peninsula, set up to the right of him. Already, in the first twenty-four hours of heavy fighting between the enemy and U.S.-ROK forces, there were over eleven thousand American casualties. The Chinese-North Korean breakthrough was threatening to be an even bigger rout of the U.S.-ROK forces than that suffered by them at the beginning of the war around the Pusan-Masan perimeter in the far south.
The president turned to the general. “How many Chinese have crossed already?”
Grey rose and reluctantly took up the retractable pointer, its tip sliding from southwest along the line of the Yalu to the northeastern end of the eight-hundred-mile-long river that had been the border between the Korean Peninsula and Manchuria for a thousand years. “They moved down from up here, Mr. President, in Shenyang — China’s most northeasterly province. The Thirty-ninth Army out of Anshan, the Fortieth from Shenyang City itself, and the Sixty-fourth from Fushun. Possibly they’ve moved the Twenty-fourth up from Yangshan — but that would have to be seconded from Beijing command.”
“How many troops altogether?” asked Mayne.
“Ah — a hundred and twenty thousand, thereabouts, Mr. President.” Grey paused for a second or two to collect his spittle. “Give or take a division.”
“How in Jesus’ name,” began Mayne, turning on the general, “can a one-hundred-and-twenty-thousand-man army and their equipment move—” looking back at the map, he eye-balled the distance south from Shenyang to the Yalu “—a hundred and fifty miles over mountainous terrain — in the dead of winter — cross a goddamn river, and take us by surprise?”
“The river’s frozen over, sir.”
“All right then — a hundred and twenty thousand of them crossing a frozen river and taking us by surprise. And our intelligence units didn’t see any of them until I get this ELINT report — until it’s too late? Come on, General.” Mayne’s voice was rising. “Where are all those super-duper movement sensors and infrared nighttime scopes we used in Vietnam? And for which I had to fight Congress?”
The general didn’t think it appropriate to remind the president of the United States that sensors hadn’t stopped General Giap in Vietnam either. Though Grey had to concede the president had a point, he nevertheless felt obliged on behalf of the U.S. Army to explain. “The difference here, Mr. President, is that under the terms of your — our — agreement with Beijing, any overflights by us to drop those sensors on the Yalu’s northern bank would have violated Chinese air space.”
“All right, Jimmy. But what’s wrong with your men’s eyes?” He gave the Yalu the back of his hand, the map stand shaking from the impact. “How the hell do a hundred and twenty thousand Chinese regulars, give or take a division, General — that’d be another thirteen thousand, right?”
“Yes, sir.”
“How do a hundred and thirty-three thousand men move up and down mountains and get across the Yalu without us seeing a goddamned one of them?”
“Sir — it’s an old Chinese maneuver. They used it on Doug MacArthur. They travel only at night. Hide by day. Anyone moves — they execute them — by bayonet — on the spot. Saves a bullet and there’s not even the noise of a shot we can pick up.”
Mayne returned to the desk, his face contorted as much by pain, despite his effort not to show it, as by the sudden catastrophe of China, with its standing army, not counting reserves, of over three million men, having entered and suddenly exploded what the Pentagon in their report to the president were pleased to call “the parameters of the war.”
“Parameters!” said Mayne. “They’ve blown the gate wide open, Jimmy! They’ve—” He sat down in the chair and was silent for a moment. “Jimmy, I don’t want to sound like a hard-ass or anything, but if this is an ‘old Chinese trick,’ like firecrackers, why the hell weren’t you ready for it? Didn’t we have reconnaissance patrols? Aircraft?”
“Yes, sir, but we could only go as far as the Yalu.”
“Christ, Jimmy, I’m no—” Mayne hesitated, his mind searching for the name of an ace pilot. “Frank Shirer. I don’t even have a pilot’s license. But even I know if you fly high enough, you can see over a damn river. See anything move. Our satellite’s supposed to read Pravda in Red Square from space — right?”
“I don’t know who made up that old crock, Mr. President, but it’s far from accurate. More a PR—”
“Don’t nitpick, Jimmy. You know what I mean. How come the first I hear of it is in a national intelligence digest out of Fort Meade who picked up a radio intercept from some poor kid in one of our forward observation posts screaming that he was being overrun by Chinese?”
“The weather, sir. It’s been snowing like crazy the last few days. Not even the satellites could get through that.”
“Before that?” pressed Mayne relentlessly. He wasn’t interested in assigning guilt, but he damn well didn’t want it to happen anywhere else — in Europe, for instance. Or, God forbid, at the Aleutian back door. Or the Middle East. General Grey retracted the pointer. “Sir. We just plain didn’t see them. I mean, that’s pretty tough discipline they have, sir.” The general could see Mayne behind the desk, sitting well back in his chair but far from relaxed, hand massaging his temple.
“Well, I wish we had that kind of discipline. Our boys and the South Koreans are on the defensive again just when I thought we could wrap it up in Korea and divert some of our divisions up to the Aleutians and Europe, now that Doug Freeman’s got us moving again over there.” He sat forward, hands clasped on the green blotter, speaking more slowly now, more reflectively. “Course, if we were like them — had the kind of army where you could shoot a man for moving — I suppose we wouldn’t be fighting them. But — hell, Jimmy, we’ve got to do something. Fast. By pulling back — retreating like this—”
“Some units just plain broke, Mr. President, and ran.”
Mayne’s arms were cradling his head, the thumbs pressing hard into tense neck muscle. “Got to get some stiffener over there or else—” His voice was more agitated than the general had ever heard it. “Or we’ll have a goddamn A-grade, number one, full-blown political and military disaster on our hands.” He was out of the chair again, fingers running about his belt, glancing up at the map for several seconds, then turning toward Grey. “If we lost Korea, Jimmy, as a base — the only one we have on mainland Asia from which to harass Russia’s southern flank, then—” He broke off, his tone suddenly infused with new energy. “Jimmy — we’re still pressing ahead in Europe, am I right? No surprises in the last twenty-four hours or anything?”
“No, sir. Everything’s going as well as can be expected. Doug Freeman’s got the Russkis retreating so fast, he’s in danger of outrunning his own supply line. The British and Norwegians are worried Moscow could panic — throw in the conventional towel and go nuclear while they’ve still got time.”
“They’ll talk peace before that,” said Mayne.
“I’m not so sure, sir. I mean, it might be Politburo policy to talk before anyone pushes the button, but policy gets the bum’s rush when panic sets in. It only takes some nut, some kid on an SS-18 battery, to start it. And remember, the Russians and Chinese have huge shelters. Haven’t a hope of saving most of their population and industry, of course, and they know it, but the Chinese figure on, say, saving twenty percent of their population in the worst possible case. For us that’d be totally unacceptable, but in China, that’s two hundred million people left. Russian estimate used to be they’d lose twenty-four million and still they’d have more than twice our population. We haven’t got anything like their civil defense. Our public was so pummeled with that ‘nuclear winter’ shit — excuse me, sir— that we didn’t think there was any point to civil defense. So if the Russians do panic in the face of Freeman’s advance, we’re in one hell of a lot of—”
“Then we’d better slow down the advance. Tell Freeman to consolidate, give him time to build up supplies. Good point, Jimmy, about the supply lines. Will the joint chiefs go for a halt?”
“They will, sir.”
From the general’s quick response, Mayne guessed the C in Cs had instructed him to make that very argument. “Then I suggest we transfer Doug Freeman immediately — to C in C Korea. Get Anderson out of there. Put Freeman back on his old turf for a while.”
This the general wasn’t ready for. “But — Mr. President. We want to slow down in Europe, yes. But if we take General Freeman out and there’s a Russian counterattack, then—”
“Don’t tell me we haven’t got any other generals over there, Jimmy? Defensive backs?”
“Of course not, sir. I simply mean that Freeman has a high profile. If the Russkis see him withdrawing—”
“It’ll be a demonstration of enormous confidence in all our other field commanders,” countered Mayne. “Most of them trained by you, Jimmy, I might add.”
“Maybe, sir, but still—”
“Jimmy, Freeman knows Korea. He attacked the North Korean capital at night, got in, got out, and gave us time to reinforce the Pusan-Masan perimeter. We need a man like that.”
“You mean someone a little bit crazy?”
“We have to get those Chinese back across the Yalu.”
“I don’t know if even Doug Freeman can do that, Mr. President.”
“Let’s try.”
The general nodded his assent. “Very well, sir.”
“Jimmy?”
“Sir?”
“If you aren’t happy with bringing him out of Europe, how about we play a shell game?”
General Grey frowned.
“General, we live in a country that produces more actors than any other. We breed them by the bushel. Hell, if I remember correctly, one of them occupied this office.”
There was subdued laughter from Trainor. General Grey was warming to the idea. “A double?”
“You won’t have much time,” conceded Mayne.
But Grey, pursing his lips, was considering the logistics. “It might just work. They did it with Montgomery. But how about Freeman’s getting to Korea? If that gets out, the Russians—”
“It won’t,” said Mayne, turning to Trainor. “Under wraps. No press. Shut everything down like Reagan did in Grenada and Bush in Panama. Keep the press right out of it — and only allow two or three of Doug’s top aides to go with him. Leave the rest in Europe. Hell — he’ll need to leave most of them in Europe to execute his strategy over there — until he gets back.”
“Mr. President,” General Grey told his commander in chief, “Doug Freeman’ll the without the press — without an audience.”
“Then he’ll the in a good cause,” said Mayne, reaching for the water decanter, a signal to Trainor it was time for the pain pills.
“Think positive, Frank,” Shirer told himself, as one by one he saw the green blips of Salt Lake City’s brood of aircraft disappearing from his radar screen as they landed safely on the carrier. Finally only one blip remained, approximately three miles starboard aft of the carrier: the “Sea King” helo on its plane guard station. Shirer had been making pattern for thirty minutes, and the nose wheel hadn’t budged, so that now he knew that he had only twenty-seven minutes remaining before he’d have to take her in. “Like a bird, like a bird,” he repeated to himself, recalling the words of his old instructor during his first carrier landing. “Coming in on a carrier’s way different from having a mile of runway to screw around on. Go in like the birds — feet first, get your rear rubber down, hook the wire, and the nose’ll take care of itself.” The only trouble was, this time Shirer knew the nose wouldn’t take care of itself, not with the wheel only halfway down. He tried to remember whether there had ever been a barricade engagement on Salt Lake City—a crash landing racing at 150 miles an hour into the nylon net.
In another three minutes, Commander Harris in flight deck control was watching the last of the Salt Lake City’s air umbrella, an E-C Hawkeye long-range warning aircraft, its rotodome stem retracting, the dome sitting on the plane’s fuselage like a huge white pancake, wings already folding up and back as the plane was being hauled by a mule, a flat yellow tractor, to the port elevator as fast as the crosswind would allow so that it could be moved out of harm’s way in the hangar deck below.
“Soon as that baby’s in the dungeon,” instructed Harris, “let me know.”
“Yes, sir,” replied a tired assistant one deck below in air traffic control, which was part of the combat information center. “Sir — LSO says we may have a foul deck.”
“Chri—” Harris began, checked himself, and asked, “How long’s two oh three got fuel for?”
“Twenty-four minutes, sir.”
The flight deck commander called the LSO. What he needed to know was whether the LSO had any idea of what the debris on the deck might be. And where?
“Can’t tell you, Phil,” came the LSO’s reply. “Might be nothing, but thought I saw something drop off when the last Hawkeye came in.”
“It was a clean trap, wasn’t it?” the FDC asked the LSO.
“Yeah — clean trap. But I thought I saw something after she hit. Could have been thrown up in her wash.”
“Okay. We’d better check it out.”
“Looked like it was near three cat.” He meant the white line that marked the waist catapult run.
“Thanks, Pete,” answered the worried FDC. If it was an obstacle near the waist catapult line, it could be a dislodged nut, fuel tank flap — or anything from the scores of deck vehicles used to push and pull the planes into position. A nut sucked into either one of the Tomcat’s intakes could mean a multimillion-dollar engine gone, or a seabird that had been hit and knocked to the steel-grooved deck could become an instant lubricant the moment the twenty-five-ton aircraft, its nose wheel not fully extended, landed, sending the Tomcat sliding an inch or two out of alignment — which, at over a hundred miles an hour, could wipe out the aircraft and anyone nearby. The FDC lifted the phone for the air boss six decks above him, depressed the other phone atop his right shoulder, and requested a search party for the area around the four arrestor wires. They simply didn’t have time for a full-fledged “walk-down” to make sure the deck was sterile.
Within a minute, the chief petty officer and the sixteen-man search party team were scouring the deck, and it was Seaman First Class Sic. Elmer Ventral, who’d been on the Salt Lake less than a year, who spotted the oil rag caught in the corner of one of the four-feet-diameter circular steel mountings that houses the one-and-a-half-inch-thick cable to which the number one arrestor wire was attached. Whenever the wire hooked an aircraft, the big cable took the strain.
“All right,” said the chief petty officer, whose job it would be to report to flight deck control. “Let’s get inside before we all freeze our butts off.”
Young Ventral, two days away from his twenty-first birthday, married little more than fourteen months and already a father, felt good about having found the oil rag. It couldn’t really have caused that much damage — unless it got sucked in by an air intake — but the air boss was a fanatic about a sterile deck, and Ventral knew it would stand him in good stead.
The CPO who had to tell the FDC wasn’t so lucky.
“Jesus Christ!” Harris bellowed. “What was that doing there?”
“Somebody must have dropped it, sir.”
“I know somebody dropped it, Chief. And I want his ass. You read me?”
“Yes, sir,” said the CPO, but he knew the task would be hopeless. So did the FDC. They were both feeling bad about it, both having worked with the air boss long enough to know that when any single player screwed up, the team screwed up. FDC called PRIFLY and told the air boss what had fouled his deck.
“A rag!” said the air boss, his voice rising like a tenor going for the high C as he walked, or rather stalked, behind the grease pencil status board and stared down into the bluish light that washed the flight deck. “We’ve got a man to come down and some joker’s dropped a fuckin’ rag?”
“Yes, sir.”
“Listen, Phil, I want his ass.”
“Yes, sir.”
The moment he put the phone down, the air boss turned to PRIFLY’s mini boss. “Get Lieutenant Ronson up here pronto.”
“Yes, sir.”
Ronson was the chief of the Salt Lake City’s TV station. The air boss knew there was no chance of finding out who exactly dropped the rag, but he was going to make it item one — cut right into the movie and play it on every shift for the next forty-eight hours. They’d be so goddamned sick of that oil rag—
Meantime he had a plane to get down and, glancing at the real-time PRIFLY clock, saw he had seventeen minutes.
“We going to get this barricade up in time?”
It was more an order than a question, but the mini boss complied. “They’re working on it, sir. They think they’ll make it.”
The air boss picked up his binoculars, looking down at the barricade, a series of tough, hydraulically anchored nylon ribbons forming a vertical netting that stood twenty-four feet high, strung across the flight deck and which he hoped would catch the Tomcat if, due to the necessarily high “up” angle the pilot would have to have on the nose, the Tomcat missed the three wire.
“You done one of these before, Henry?” the air boss asked his assistant.
“No, sir.”
“What time we got, Henry?”
“Sixteen minutes, sir,” replied the mini boss, wondering whether his superior had ever handled a barricade engagement himself.
“Weather report, sir,” interjected a seaman, handing him the printout. “Wind’s dying, but more fog.”
“Great,” said the air boss sardonically. “Just what we fucking need. Be lucky if he can see the meatball. We got rescue and fire all set, Henry?”
“All set, sir.”
“Anyone loses a goddamned oil rag in future and the whole shift pays. Beer ration cut to one can — or zilch.” He shifted his binoculars to look down at the port side of the barricade being laid out, its nylon ribbons flapping furiously in the cross wind. “How much time we got, Henry?”
“Fourteen minutes, sir,” said the mini boss, the other spotter trying to keep visual contact with Shirer’s blinking red light along with the radar blip. The mini boss looked teed off— couldn’t the air boss read a goddamned clock? Everyone was getting too tense.
Five decks below, TV technicians were plugging into the flight deck camera feed. With the crew of over five thousand below decks run ragged by the day-in, day-out dangerous task of keeping planes constantly airborne, the Tomcat’s final approach might as well entertain as instruct. In the dungeon, above the noise of the mules pushing and pulling planes about and scores of technicians swarming over parked planes, many of the aircraft looking as if they’d been roughly cannibalized for spare parts, some green jackets checking Tomcat avionic “slip-in, pull-out” circuit boards in the black boxes started making book on whether Shirer would make it or not. More navy pilots had been lost in accidents than had been shot down.
Up on the flight deck in the wait room, S1c. Elmer Ventral, whose job it was to race out to release the hook immediately after a plane caught the wire, was being ribbed by the rest of the work crew, who’d awarded him the “ROFOR”—royal order of the fucking oil rag.
Unbeknownst to Ventral, the CPO in charge of the shift Ventral was part of, following carrier tradition, had called down to one of the bakeries aboard to have them bake a cake for Ventral’s birthday — and to decorate it with something that looked like an oil rag.
Up in PRIFLY, the air boss was going over everything that could possibly go wrong. He called down to flight deck control. “Harris!”
“Yes, sir?”
“Phil — you have the new weight for two oh three?” The loss of weight occasioned by the Tomcat burning up as much fuel as possible before landing would have to be vectored in so the arrestor wires wouldn’t be too taut.
“We’ve got it covered, sir.”
“Good man.”
“Barricade’s up, sir,” reported the mini boss.
“Clear the deck!” ordered the air boss, his voice projected by the powerful PA system designed to cut through any noise on the carrier, including the cacophony of noise attending the launch of a full air operation, when the air boss dispatched the carrier’s planes at a rate of one every thirty seconds.
“Decks clear,” came the confirmation two minutes later.
“Very good,” acknowledged the air boss.
“Fog bank closing,” another voice informed him.
“Not good,” said the air boss, turning around. There was a nervous chuckle. The air boss then ordered the Sea King helo off the starboard beam to move from its plane guard position three miles away from the carrier to one mile. If the pilot overshot and had to ditch, there was no way the ninety-thousand ton ship, at twenty-two knots, could stop or alter course to assist, risking the integrity of the entire battle group. Besides, even if all engines were shut down, it would still take the ship over a mile to stop.
After crossing the loch, Robert and Rosemary noticed how many more cars were coming south from Mallaig than those, like themselves, heading north toward the fishing port. And after a while, when the Prices’ car hadn’t shown up behind them, Robert Brentwood grew even more suspicious of the Englishman’s story. If the Prices, or whatever their real name was, were really protecting him and Rosemary, then they’d be going on to Mallaig. For Robert, the choice was clear. Either he and Rose could go on ahead to Mallaig, looking over their shoulders all the time in the fog—”a hell of a way,” he murmured, “to spend your honeymoon”—or he could do something about it. As he made the U-turn cautiously in the swirling fog, heading back in the direction of the ferry, Rosemary asked him to pass her another Gravol. Whether it was morning sickness or from their “run-in” with the Prices, she didn’t know, but she felt “awful.”
Brentwood saw the vague shape of a car coming at him from the direction of the ferry. It wasn’t the Prices. It occurred to him they might have turned back to the ferry, recrossed the loch, and made a call perhaps — arranged a little surprise for the captain of the Sea Wolf in Mallaig — away from witnesses and the busload of kids on the ferry?
After another five minutes or so, he saw what at first seemed to be a cluster of lambs and a shepherd at the roadside, but on getting closer, he could see it was a group of teenage girls and, immediately behind them, the school bus. The girls, in buff-colored skirts and maroon blazers, stood near the bus, which had a miter with a scroll underneath painted on its side. It was pulled off on the opposite side of the road where it had been heading for Mallaig, and soon he could read “St. Mark’s” written in black letters above the more colorful school emblem. The girls were all standing in a group, subdued. A moment later he saw two figures, a man and a woman, emerging from behind the bus, but saw it wasn’t the Prices. The woman, in a gray pleated skirt and coat, was walking toward him briskly, and behind her was a man who appeared to be the bus driver, wearing an anorak. The woman, obviously in charge, nodded brusquely.
“Anything the matter?” he asked.
“There’s been an accident,” she replied matter-of-factly. “Can you help?”
“I know first aid,” said Brentwood, getting out of the car. “What—”
“It’s too late for that, I’m afraid,” she said. “First aid.” The bus driver looked shaken, turning, his arm pointing behind the bus to a car, lopsided in a ditch, almost completely hidden by bracken. Brentwood’s first thought was that it was the Prices, but he couldn’t tell from this distance.
“I think,” began the bus driver, “what Miss Sawyers means, sir, is that you could help us if you’d take a message for us to Mallaig. We can’t go over sixty kilometers an hour on the bus. Be a while ‘afore we get in.”
“If you’re going in that direction,” said the schoolmistress.
“No problem,” said Robert. “Be glad to help. Just give me the message and I’ll—”
“Noo, lass—” called out the bus driver. “… Miss Wilson! Where you think you’re going?” Robert saw it was one of the schoolgirls across the road moving away from the group.
“Mother nature,” the girl replied.
“Up t’other way,” the driver instructed her. “And not too far from the bus, mind. We could lose you in this lot.”
The schoolmistress was leading Brentwood back to the car obscured by the bracken. It was the Prices’s.
“A terrible accident,” she said. “Perhaps we shouldn’t touch anything.”
“Christ!” said Brentwood, the mistress wincing at his blasphemy. “Sorry—” he went on, not wanting to look any further but feeling compelled.
“I think we should keep it quiet,” she said, her voice calm but nevertheless strained. “Until you reach Mallaig. No point in upsetting the girls any more than they have been. One or two of them saw the broken glass — otherwise we wouldn’t have seen the car in the bracken. Thank goodness Wilkins — our bus driver — had the sense to keep them away from it.”
“Yes,” agreed Robert. “Well, leave it to me, miss. I’ll tell the police in Mallaig. Maybe you should give me your name.”
“And you?” she asked. Robert showed her the U.S. Navy card with his photo. She was visibly relieved.
“Oh, thank goodness. I saw you leaving the ferry, you see, and wondered—”
Brentwood suddenly remembered something, too — the car speeding past him in the rain, shortly after he’d made the U-turn to come back. What if he and Rosemary hadn’t turned but, like the Prices, had kept on in the fog toward Mallaig?
“Listen, Miss Sawyers,” he said urgently. “I think we should all go into Mallaig. On your bus. Can we hitch a ride with you?”
“Why, yes, but—”
“I haven’t time to explain fully yet.”
He saw her suspicion return. “Look, when we get to Mallaig, you can call this number — here on my card. It’s the U.S. Navy attaché at the U.S. Embassy in London. But right now I think it’d be best if we all go in together to Mallaig.”
“Perhaps one of us should stay here and—” she began.
“No,” cut in Brentwood. “No one stays here. Everyone gets on the bus.” The teacher and the driver looked uneasily at one another. “Trust me!” said Brentwood. “I know what I’m doing, believe me.” The driver made noises about sweeping the glass off the road. “Leave it,” said Brentwood. “Believe me, I know what I’m doing.”
“Very well, I suppose —” began Miss Sawyers. “You’d best get the girls back on the bus, Wilkins.”
“Yes, miss.”
The drive to Mallaig was a mournful one, only a few of the girls talking, a few giggling, trying to act nonchalant despite their having come across what Miss Sawyers had somberly told them was a “fatal accident.”
“But I didn’t see any damage to the car,” Rosemary insisted.
“It was on the driver’s-side fender,” Robert told her. “On the right side — you couldn’t see it from where our car was parked. Slammed right into the ditch. Price probably dozed off at the wheel.”
“How dreadful.” The Gravol hadn’t worked yet, and she felt so ill, she thought she was going to throw up.
When the bus reached the Mallaig police station, it was an anticlimax for the girls of St. Mark’s, who had thought they were in sole possession of knowledge of the accident. But the police said someone had already called it in. That being the case, Robert told the desk sergeant he was surprised he hadn’t seen any ambulance or rescue vehicle passing them on the way in.
“Ah,” replied the desk sergeant good-naturedly, “we wouldn’t be using flashing lights unless it’s an extreme emergency, sir. Air raid regulations, you see.”
The sergeant took down the statements from the three of them, spun the log book about, thanked Miss Sawyers and Wilkins for their help, and informed Robert that “the super’d like a word with you, Captain Brentwood, if you don’t mind, sir. I’ll have the corporal make Mrs. Brentwood a cuppa. Come inside the staff room if she likes, sir.”
“Thanks.”
The superintendent had Brentwood draw up a chair. “Well, Captain, I know you’re not a police officer, but I’d appreciate your assessment of the situation. In your line of country, I expect you’ve seen a few injuries?”
“Yes,” acknowledged Brentwood. “Well, from what I saw through the shattered window, I’d say the car was forced off the road, then they were shot. Both between the eyes — at short range. Bullet holes in the windshield. You couldn’t do that at speed — I mean, from a moving vehicle.”
“Were the doors locked, Captain?”
“I think so. If I remember correctly, on the way up here, the bus driver said he’d had to reach in through the shattered window glass to pull up the lock.”
“Silly man,” said the superintendent.
“He told me he used a handkerchief,” said Robert.
“Oh, aye. But now any other fingerprints on the door lock are probably gone.” The superintendent paused, running fingers through thinning white hair. “You’ve no idea of the weapon, I suppose?”
“Small-bore, I’d say. Neat hole in the forehead — the back of the skull was something else.”
“Strewn about, was it?”
Robert sat back in the uncomfortable wooden chair, face grim with the recollection. “Never seen anything like it.”
The superintendent was nodding. “A high-vel, most probably,” he mused. “Not much noise, faster than most, with a mercury-filled head. They like twenty-two-caliber. That’d explain the back-of-the-head business.” He looked across the desk at Brentwood. “Did none of the girls see tha’?”
“No. Wilkins, the bus driver, kept them away.”
“And quite right, too. How’s your wife taking this?”
“She’ll be fine. I told her it was an accident. I doubt she believes me but, well, when she’s feeling better, maybe…”
“Not much of a honeymoon you’ve had, lad?” the superintendent cut in.
Robert couldn’t remember telling him they were on their honeymoon. The sergeant saw his surprise. “Oh, we’ve been given the gen on you, lad. Ever since our boys got on to them in Surrey.”
“You’ve circulated their descriptions, I hope?” said Brentwood.
The corporal came in with two teas and the station’s ration of Peek Frean biscuits on a tray.
The superintendent dunked a chocolate sandwich, tapping it on the large mug showing President Suzlov being kicked in the butt. “I’m sorry, Captain. I’m not with you. How do you mean—’circulated their descriptions’?”
“Well, I mean whoever’s chasing us. Whoever’s trying to kill nuclear sub captains. Of course, I know they’re special Soviet agents — SPETS, I suppose — but I assume you know what they look like by now — or don’t you?”
“Och, mon, you’ve got it all mixed up. “ ‘Twas those bloody Prices who were gunning for you. Hoping for a lonely place on the stretch after the ferry. If our boys hadn’t caught up with ‘em, you’d be dead, lad.”
Brentwood slowly put his tea down on the superintendent’s desk. “Then who in hell were—” He gave the superintendent the description of the young newlyweds they’d met in the B and B. The ones with the confetti still in their hair.
The superintendent fished a file from his top drawer and, opening the folder, passed over an ID kit sketch. It was them. “The ‘charmers,’ we call ‘em,” said the super. “Real charmers, they are. Bastards change their name every other week.” The super hesitated. “Captain Brentwood, I hate to say this, but — well, first of all, I’d better make sure I’ve got the right info from London. Your naval attaché informed us your leave’s up in a few days. Correct?”
“Yes.”
“Now, this is up to you, mind, but if I were you, I’d get back to Holy Loch. Out of danger — if you see what I mean?”
“How about my wife?”
“It’s you they want, lad. Not her. ‘Sides, we’ll keep a close eye on her. We do it for a lot of you chaps. But they’ve not grabbed any of the womenfolk yet. They know we’d never give in to a kidnapping situation. No, as I say, it’s you they’re after.”
There was a long silence, broken finally by the superintendent. “Would you like a wee dram of something stronger in that tea?”
“Yes,” Robert Brentwood replied, “I would.”
“Corporal?”
While they were waiting, the superintendent told the nuclear sub skipper, “She won’t like it, of course — wives never do— but tell her you’ve got orders to sail a few days earlier. Won’t be much of a Christmas, I’m afraid.”
Brentwood nodded tiredly. He realized that then and there, police protection or not, he was going to give Spence Senior his.45, along with the police ID sketch of the two charmers from the B and B. And he was going to tell Richard Spence that if either of the charmers ever showed up around the Spence house, he was to call police emergency straightaway. And if he couldn’t he was to shoot the charmers dead.
Robert Brentwood took the tea and double Scotch in one gulp. It wasn’t safe anywhere.
Coming down toward the postage-stamp-size deck of the carrier, Shirer knew it would be his last chance. He had the carrier’s meatball centered, the green dots either side of it confirming he was on the right glide path, despite the buffeting of the crosswind. The wind had blown the deck clear of fog, and while the salt spray on his cockpit obscured his view, it wasn’t enough to trouble him.
While flying in pattern to use up his fuel, he’d had time to psyche himself up for a barricade engagement should he fail to make a clean-trap, hooking the three wire. Besides this, there was the four wire, and providing he could keep the Tomcat’s ass low, nose high, most of the braking would be over before the nose could lunge and take out the fighter’s Hughes radar and the long-range Northrop target-TV. If all went well, he’d halt the plane fast enough so that even if he slid, the Tomcat would stop before reaching the net. His major problem, which the LSO calmly reminded him of, was that unlike the normal landing when, after hitting the deck at 150 miles an hour, the pilot kept the engine at 75 percent power, ready for touch and go should there be anything wrong, Stirrer’s approach on Bingo fuel would be his only one. And with the barricade up, the Tomcat would be fully committed once it touched the deck, Shirer having to immediately cut power. If he hit the net at three-quarter power, he could “total” any or all of the other aircraft clustered cheek to jowl on the cramped parking area of the flight deck, the carrier able to house only half her aircraft belowdecks.
“Beautiful, two oh three,” came the landing officer’s voice. “Beautiful — on the glide path — on the glide path—”
The bluish-white blot of the deck suddenly became a blur of lights, the narrow deck widened, the orange ball centered, the twenty-five-ton fighter hitting the deck with a force of over forty tons. Below the flight deck, the cable housings crashed like two freight trains. Shirer felt the harness jerk, his body slammed back into the seat with a force of over seventy tons. He cut power and left it to God.
The Tomcat skewed, and halted abruptly, the wire’s “pullback” failing to release the hook so that Elmer Ventral and two other green shirts following a brown-shirted plane captain raced to unhook the plane, but the three wire snapped. The cable whipped through the air. Ventral disappeared, two men near him smacked clear off the deck. As the petty officer and two other men attended the plane’s chocks, another sounded the “man overboard” alarm of his fiber mike, the Klaxon wailing throughout the enormous ship. Immediately the Sea King helo hovering a quarter mile astern moved in.
Ventral’s top half continued writhing close to the island, slithering in its own entrails, the green jackets helping Shirer unstrap, leading him quickly off to flight deck control and debriefing.
The Sea King’s searchlights crisscrossed the sea, the helo hovering above the wide, bubbling wake, whose luminescent plankton made it look like wild, undulating hills of cream.
Neither of the two men were found.
As both the captain’s and the flight deck controller’s investigation would reveal, the oil rag should have raised the alarm that the big one-and-a-half-inch “braking” cable, to which the arrester wires were anchored, had been strained — a loose strand hooking the oil-stained cloth, the worst section of frayed cable hidden from view in the cable’s housing.
Shirer, sitting exhausted in his cabin, knew it wasn’t the first time a wire had gone, and it wouldn’t be the last. He felt bad about it but not guilty. If you went “into guilt,” as the air boss often repeated, you’d soon be “out of” flying.
It was announced on all three of the carrier’s TV channels that there would be a service for Leading Seaman Ventral and the other two flight deck crewmen at 1400 hours next day— “Air Ops permitting.”
Most of the five thousand men aboard Salt Lake City had never heard of Ventral or the other two men, but this made it all the more important for those who could to attend.
“Shirer?”
It was the air boss’s voice outside his cabin. Shirer found the effort of getting up off his bunk and going to the door as tiring as if he were dragging a bag of cement. “Yes, sir?”
“You okay?”
“Yes, sir.”
“No you’re not.” The air boss slapped him on the shoulder. “You’re off to Pearl in the morning. Then San Diego and Washington.”
“What’s the scuttlebutt?” Shirer asked.
“Don’t know. Haven’t got a clue.”
“Guess I’ll find out soon enough, sir.”
The air boss smiled and turned to go. “Need anything tonight? We can lay on room service if you like.”
“No, thanks, sir,” replied Shirer. “D’we know what screwed up on that nose wheel?”
“Not as yet. By morning.”
“Yes, sir. Ah — I’d like to attend the burial service for…”
The air boss was shaking his head. “Sorry, but Washington wants you ASAP. Don’t worry — I’ll explain it to the men.”
“Appreciate that, sir.”
“You get some shut-eye.”
Shirer didn’t need an order to sleep. He hadn’t been as tired as this since the dogfights over Adak, when, after three or four sorties, you were ready to sleep on the tarmac. Lying on the bunk, he looked down at his boots. He’d have to undo them before he— His head lolled and he was fast asleep.