WW III

back to base and received the tape and the letter she sent him, he should advance the tape for a minute or two until William started talking—”otherwise the boy’s parents might think there was something wrong with it.”

* * *

The censor patched out “Bahama Queen” and went over it again, making sure there was no mention of the USS Roosevelt, on which her brother Robert Brentwood served, and whited out the time and place of the burial, giving another point hundreds of miles away so as not to give away any more information about the hospital ship’s location.

CHAPTER FIFTY-EIGHT

Standing at the bow, his tank commander’s collar pulled up, hands gripping the rail like a Roman tribune aboard his chariot, Douglas Freeman went up to the Saipan’s starboard flying bridge as the LPH headed north in the Sea of Japan, having reduced her speed from fifteen to a mere five knots. When Al Banks found the general, he immediately told him he had good news and bad news and asked him which he wanted to hear first.

“Both barrels,” said Freeman, adding grumpily, “They’ve turned it down.”

“No, sir.”

Freeman pushed himself back from the rail. “Don’t say they’ve approved?”

“Hold on a minute, General. Good news is, the Taiwanese have told Washington they’ll back off for the moment. They’re reinforcing the offshore islands of Matsu and Quemoy. That’s provocative, but as long as they don’t start shelling the mainland or launch an amphibious assault, Washington believes China will stay out of it. They haven’t withdrawn all the way to Taiwan, but at least they’ve withdrawn to their side of the dividing line in the Taiwan Strait.”

“All right, so China’s off our back. Quid pro quo. They won’t resupply the NKA in return for us keeping the Kuomintang on a leash. I don’t like it, but right now I don’t care what those lily-livered bastards in Foggy Bottom have arranged. What’s the bad news? Have we got the go signal or not?”

“Monsoon, General. Moving down from the Sea of Okhotsk.”

“It figures,” said Freeman. There was disgust in his voice, but it was a calm disgust at receiving the news of yet another delay, and the blowup that Banks had expected never materialized.

“Now,” said the general calmly, “God’s on their side.” He turned back to face the sea. “When will it hit us?”

“Ten hours — maybe less, the met boys say.”

“Why?” asked the general slowly, darkly, in a tone so controlled, so ominous, that Banks would have preferred some of the general’s feigned short-fuse rhetoric. “Why is he doing this to me?” repeated the general.

Freeman leaned against the rail, one foot up on the lower rung.

“All right, Al,” he said wearily, without looking around at his aide. “Let me know when the monsoon’s expected to be over. ‘Course,” he sighed, “by that time Washington’ll probably have changed their minds.” Now he turned around from the rail. “The Yosu perimeter?”

“Half what it was, General. Intelligence estimates it can hold four days at most.”

Freeman had turned away again, looking up this time at the starless sky. “God, I hate nights like this.” There was a long silence — uncomfortable for Banks.

“Anything else, General?”

“No, Al. Keep me updated on that damned monsoon.”

“Yes, sir. Goodnight.”

* * *

As impatient as General Freeman was, alone on the upper deck of LPH Saipan, below in the oil-smelling belly of the LPH’s hangars, David Brentwood, one of the two thousand marines and airborne troops still waiting, put his camouflage pack against the bulkhead as a pillow, loosening his load-bearing vest and taking off the Kevlar helmet, placing his protective eyeglasses inside it, and unsnapping his belt. He was reading the note on the postcard again.

“Hey, Stumble-ass, don’t worry about it,” said Thelman. “She’ll be there when you get back.”

“Then,” said another marine, “keep off twenty-six. Gunner kept those cold pills. He’ll be about as fast as Tim Conway.”

The thing David couldn’t work out was why on earth Melissa had sent a postcard of herself — one of those camera machine shots — without an envelope. It was the flirt in her, he thought— she’d know very well all the other guys would see it. And there was nothing really in the note — just a “wish you were here” scrawl, a faint tropic isle background, and Stacy, the note said, had passed his friggin’ IR major with straight A’s. Got a deferment from the national call-up because IR was “hot” right now.

“Hey, man,” said Thelman. “ ‘Tain’t a Dear John.”

David wasn’t so sure.

* * *

Across the world, an ocean and continent away, the mood in the control room of the USS Roosevelt was as tense as First Officer Peter Zeldman could remember it. What would “Bing,” Robert Brentwood, do? They were going up to a hundred feet for the third attempt to receive a burst message.

“Five hundred — four fifty — four hundred — three fifty…”

Robert Brentwood stood on the raised periscope island, both hands behind him on the guard rail, legs crossed, looking with quiet confidence across at the sonar, a lot of fresh sea noise coming in, but nothing that stood out in the clutter.

“One hundred, sir.”

“Very well. Roll out VLF aerial sixteen fifty.”

“VLF to sixteen fifty.”

They watched the VLF registering on the stern monitor relay screen as a white trace as the aerial, ready to receive anything on the three-to-thirty kilohertz band, extruded from Roosevelt’s stern pod, the long wire rising on buoys until it lay extended approximately eighteen to twenty feet below the surface of the sea.

“Begin the count,” ordered Brentwood.

“Five minutes and counting… four minutes thirty seconds…”

At ten seconds to go, the tense mood in control and throughout the sub had changed to a palpable gloom. Brentwood and his crew knew that in five or six hours they would be no more than sixty to eighty miles out of Holy Loch and would have to go up for a burst message. If none was received then, they would have to stay out with the assumption that the war had gone nuclear and that the Roosevelt, on Brentwood’s authority alone, would launch its six eight-warhead-tipped MX missiles aft of the sail at its preselected forty-eight targets in the Soviet Union.

“Wind her in,” said Brentwood calmly.

“Sir,” proffered Zeldman, “should we try HF?”

“Negative.”

Brentwood had already figured that one out; using the high-frequency aerial would mean taking the sub up farther so it could literally poke its stick HF aerial above the surface, the chance of receiving messages being much greater but more dangerous, as one penetration of the sea-air interface by the aerial could be recognized by Soviet satellite intelligence, if not intercepted by another Soviet sub. “Sticking your head out the front door” is what the crew called it, whereas with VLF you stayed submerged, not letting the enemy know where you were — the only potential giveaway a noisy VLF reel retraction or any other noise on the sub that might be picked up by the Russian subs or by their SOSUS networks. For this reason no radios were allowed without headphone attachments, and the cook could not even chop onions during silent running.

“Take her down to one thousand,” ordered Robert Brentwood.