names stenciled alongside the cockpit bright white as Shirer lined her up with the starboard bow catapult track. A yellow jacket, both his flashlights arcing, walked back as the jet fighter inched forward. Two red-jacketed ordnance men appeared in front of the plane and shone their flashlights directly onto the tips of the Tomcat’s Sidewinder missiles. Through his headphone Shirer heard the faint burr, its sound like the rundown battery sound in a car. The heat-seeking missiles were now armed and live. The Tomcat’s nose settled, its chin gently nudging the catapult’s hook as the latter was attached to the nose wheel’s strut. Across, left of him, through the rain- and steam-filled night, Shirer could see his wingman lining up on the port bow catapult.
The twin exhausts of Shirer’s F-14 turbofans wailed in zone three, having changed from red through crimson to bright orange, harsh on the deck crew’s eyes, and now moved to zone four, purplish white, and then, with the engines in the high banshee of zone five, the exhaust turned to screaming white circles edged in icy blue.
The catapult officer saw both men had “hands off” instruments so as not to interfere with catapult launch. Shirer saw the yellow-clad catapult officer drop to the left knee, right hand extended seaward. The shooter in his “dugout” pushed the button. Shirer sucked in his breath for the “kick,” the F-14 shooting forward from zero to 180 miles per hour in three seconds. Shirer, feeling his whole body slam back into the seat, ejaculated under the G force as they were hurled aloft, then took back the controls, the white slab of the carrier tilting crazily downhill in the rear vision, flecks indicating the nine ships in the carrier’s screen coming up on the RIO’s radar.
On the carrier, where he was one of the team of professionals handling up to forty jet aircraft in various stages of takeoff, loading, refueling, and arming on a slab of steel shorter than most commercial airport concourses, a ground crew plane captain, brown jacket sodden with spray and wind-driven rain, jumped down from checking a Tomcat’s Martin-Baker rear eject seat. He saw the left bow cat’s blast deflector up, and bent down, head low, hand on his helmet to be on the safe side. A weapons trolley, low to the deck and unloaded, lurched, smacked him on the thigh, pushing him just left of the deflector. A quick-thinking ordnance man hauled him down on the deck, but a wind gust caught him in the slip of the jet’s blast and he was gone.
“Man overboard!” came through to the bridge. The “air boss” in the tower kept his eyes on the plane- crowded deck, the two men on the situation board moving the small magnetic plane models according to their new disposition — there were still twelve Tomcats to launch, the second wave of Shirer’s arrowhead formation. The huge, ninety-thousand-ton ship would not turn, nor would it stop. It was up to the “rescue” department to pick up the man, either with its launches or silver Sea King chopper hovering a safe distance off from the carrier, its red and green lights blinking, hardly visible, however, in the black void beyond the ship’s undulating apron of light.
Ironically, the light from the carrier so flooded the sea immediately about her hull that the plane captain’s saltwater-activated safety light, normally quite visible in darkness, was not seen. The captain of
They called up his file from SHIPCO — ship’s personnel computer — and gave the details to the executive officer, it being his job to write the boy’s parents, farm people in Springfield, Missouri.
Already sixty miles from the carrier, Shirer, on strict radio silence, checked his head-up display and vectored in the present tail wind, which would be against them coming back — if they came back. Even with drop tanks carrying enough fuel for a maximum two-thousand-mile round trip, the computer was telling Shirer and his RIO that they would have only four minutes over Shemya Island. Still, last intelligence reports to the carrier relayed by the pick-up station at Adak Naval Station east of Shemya reported that everything was quiet on Shemya and that in what was a crucial game for the pennant, the New York Yankees had doubled the Boston Red Sox four to two.
When the phone burred, Jay told the girl to get out of bed and go and answer it. “I left it in the bathroom,” he said.
“You should turn it off,” said the girl. She was seventeen — consenting age. Jay La Roche was very careful about that.
“Don’t you fucking tell me what to do, you little tight-ass,” said La Roche, using his foot to push her out of the bed. He watched her walk away with an indifference bred of boredom.
“Just a moment,” he heard her say. She brought in the phone. Jay snatched it, cupping the mouthpiece. “You can go. There’s a hundred by the lamp.”
“We didn’t even start,” she said.
“No, well, I want a real woman. You don’t know your ass from your tit. And put on the lock when you go out.”
He turned back to the phone. “La Roche here,” he said, pulling a Kleenex and wiping his nose.
“It’s me,” said the congressman, careful not to give his name.
“That was quick. So what’s the story?”
“Listen — I did the best I could—”
Jay scrunched the Kleenex into a tight ball. “What are you telling me, Congressman?”
“Jesus, don’t use my—”
“What are you saying, damn it?” pressed La Roche, throwing off the covers and getting out of bed.
“Look, there’s some kind of flap going on up there.”
“Up where?”
“The islands. COMPAC said he’d put the request through, but there’s nothing he can do right now. She and a bunch of other nurses have been sent to some naval base hospital. Adak, I think it was.”
“You jerkin’ me off?”
“No, hey, wait a minute. I did my best.”
“You did fuck all. I want results. You’re the big politico. You’d better get me results, Congressman, or you’re going to lose your friggin’ reelection committee. I meant what I said. Now, you get to it. I
Suddenly he sat bolt upright. It was time to kick ass. He wanted her now — goddamn it, she could be killed up there. Snatching the phone, he got up and walked over to the globe on the plush burl coffee table, and in the soft peach light, looked to see if he could find Adak. Christ, it was just a spot in the ocean. To hell and gone. All he’d heard about was Shemya and the big early-warning radar there. What if the Russians hit this Adak as well as the base on Shemya? Had anyone thought of that?
Admiral Brodsky’s motorcade had passed by the Kadriorg Park as Malle was halted by the MPO guardsmen who had seen her earlier with the corporal. Distraught, so weak she’d collapsed and had to be carried out of the park, where a crowd was garnering, she was taken to MPO headquarters across the street in front of the old city hall, and charged with murder.
Alarm spread throughout the MPO and other occupation troops. If a fifty-five-year-old woman, one of the normally passive Estonians, the “handholders,” as they’d been dubbed since 1989, when they’d helped form a human chain with the other Balts to protest Russian hegemony, could strike so wantonly and brutally against the occupying troops, the situation was getting out of hand.
The matter was brought to Admiral Brodsky’s attention at once, though the woman’s name was not mentioned. Was she a suspected saboteur? he asked Malkov.
“No, Admiral, but that doesn’t mean—”
“Don’t tell me what it doesn’t mean. You’ve let these Estonian renegades run rampant. STAVKA’s still receiving reports of dud ammunition all over the place. When I initially recommended you, I thought you were tough enough to put an end to it. I was persuaded that the MPO could handle it better than the GRU. Obviously I was misinformed.”
“With all due respect, Admiral,” replied Malkov, “we’ve shot over six hundred hostages already in an attempt—”
“In an attempt, yes. But it obviously isn’t working, is it?”
