“Yes, sir.” Miller sat at the data-link.
Johnson watched Miller hit the repeat button to send Fitzgerald’s message again. The Straton was down, and no one could change that-not Kevin Fitzgerald, not Jack Miller, not all the company executives, not the company president or the chairman of the board. And he’d done this for them as much as for himself-but they’d never understand that, and never know it.
Kevin Fitzgerald picked up the company phone and dialed the executive conference room. “Let me speak to the president.”
Johnson knew his uneasiness was starting to show. He took a cigar out of his pocket and clamped it in his jaws.
Metz wanted to leave but thought it wouldn’t be a good idea. His hand reached into his jacket and touched the wad of data-link printouts. He noticed Johnson glaring at him.
Fitzgerald spoke into the phone. “Yes, sir. Fitzgerald. Just got the word. Damned bad business. I’m at the dispatch office with Ed Johnson and Mr. Metz from Beneficial. Yes. We’re leaving a dispatcher here to keep sending and to monitor. We’ll be along in ten minutes. Fine.” He hung up and turned to Johnson. “Press conference for six o’clock. You’re the star. Can you handle it?”
“Of course.”
“There are relatives of the passengers assembling in the VIP lounge. I have to speak to them. I wish I was as confident as you.” He looked at Johnson closely. “I don’t know exactly what happened here, but when those reporters start firing away at you, you damned well better have your act together.”
“Who the hell do you think you’re talking to?”
Both men glared at each other.
Metz edged out of the door and stood awkwardly in the middle of the dispatch office.
Miller pretended to be concentrating on the data-link machine. He knew that Fitzgerald was proceeding very rashly and very dangerously. He hoped to God that his suspicions-vague as they were-had at least enough substance to ensure that the chief pilot was not sticking his neck out too far.
Fitzgerald finally broke the silence. “Johnson, we’re going to find out what happened to Flight 52, what happened here, and who was negligent. And I don’t care how long it takes or who gets burned.”
Johnson took his cigar out of his mouth. “You act as though you think I planted the fucking bomb. Don’t try to use this accident to discredit me, Captain. I know how to survive, and I promise you I’ll come out of this looking just fine. Just fine.” He turned and walked out of the room, breathing the clean air of the dispatch office. His head was pounding and his stomach was in knots. He walked past Wayne Metz, past the dispatchers whose heads were down over their desks, and out into the corridor that he had walked through not so long ago.
Retired Rear Admiral Randolf Hennings leaned heavily on the rail that ran along the passageway of the 0–2 deck of the Nimitz ’s superstructure. The passageway was deserted, and it would most likely remain that way for some time. He looked up at the two white stars painted above the stairwell designating the Admiral’s Passageway. This passage was off-limits to anyone of lesser rank without a specific duty there. It was another of the Navy’s long-standing traditions to have an uncluttered passageway for an admiral. Hennings had always realized how anachronistic things like that were. Pointless traditions. But he also knew how much he enjoyed them. Codes of honor. Allegiances and oaths of duty. They were all manufactured from the same need, and they all served the same end. But they were artifacts of a vanished world, and like him, they belonged in a museum… or a tomb.
Hennings let out a long breath. He rubbed his fingers along the rope-lined handrail. Just the feel of the twisted hemp brought back a flood of memories. The South Pacific-or the South Seas, as it was called in old days. Blue water, sunny skies, palm-lined beaches, and the young officers in their tropical tan uniforms. Standing on the decks or sitting in the wardroom, listening to senior officers telling firsthand stories of the war. The great sea battles and the amphibious assaults. But those memories were tainted now. Like a submarine breaking through the surface of the sea, one word kept rising through the depths of his mind and formed on his lips: “Murder.”
Hennings descended slowly down the deserted gray passage, then opened a hatch and stepped out onto the sunlit flight deck.
A moderate breeze swept the wide expanses of the nearly deserted deck. Seventy-five yards forward of the conning tower sat the S-3 transport. The pilots were giving it a final line check. An orderly had already collected Hennings’s luggage from his stateroom, and it was sitting near the baggage door. It seemed so long ago that the S-3 had brought him here. Hennings turned and walked away from the aircraft.
The Pacific sun lay directly astern of the ship, and the asphalt flight deck gave off waves of undulating heat. He spotted a seaman working near the aft starboard elevator, and he turned to avoid him. He crossed the deck diagonally and walked toward the fantail. He approached the edge of the deck and stood with his hands on the chain rail. Below, he could see the white foaming wake left behind by the giant nuclear-powered carrier. Straight down, mounted on the stern, a huge American flag hung from its mast. The flag snapped nicely in the wind, its bright colors standing out against the white wake.
Randolf Hennings thought about his wife, Mary. He had spent most of their thirty-nine years of marriage away from her. And with her death coming so soon after his retirement, he had never really had the time to do the things with her that he had put off for so long.
He thought about his friends. Most of them were dead, some in battle, some from natural causes. The remainder were living out their lonely retirements. As a Navy man, he had no roots, no hometown, no family that knew him.
More and more he had come to understand that he was not only lonely, he was an anachronism as well. He had always believed that today’s scientific advancements and solutions were going to require some unexpected and unacceptable payments tomorrow. Now he realized that tomorrow was here. And today’s situation ethics as practiced by James Sloan, often led to more unhappiness and more dire consequences than yesterday’s rigid moral code. It was this runaway technology, with no clear sense of ethics and no accountability, that killed the Straton and everyone aboard her. That killed Peter Matos. Hennings had tried to fit into the new scheme but had succeeded only in being an accessory to a monstrous crime.
He had heard the S-3’s engines starting on the forward service elevator 200 yards behind him. They would be looking for him soon. Captain Diehl and a few officers and men would assemble quickly to pipe him off, then get back to more important duties.
Randolf Hennings stared into the churning wake. He thought of those officers he knew who were buried at sea, and whose lives had ended in the sea. They had lived shorter lives than his, but had died before anything could erase their heroic deeds.
Someday, he believed, on the Judgment Day, the sea and the earth would give up its dead, and give up its secrets as well. Then men would point to their murderers, their torturers, to those who falsely accused them, to those whose negligence and stupidity had caused their deaths. Then God would judge each man in turn and mete out a fitting punishment.
He heard the ship’s address system call his name in the distance.
Randolf Hennings slid beneath the chain rail and strode purposefully to the edge of the ship’s fantail. Without breaking stride he stepped from the carrier’s deck, fell past the safety net, past the unfurled American flag, and dropped unnoticed into the white wake of the USS Chester W. Nimitz.
16
John Berry’s shoulders ached from the strain of hand-flying the Straton, and his body was beginning to react to the beating it had taken during the violent descent and his battle with McVary. Bruises covered his face and arms, and there was a stiffness in his joints. His head was beginning to throb, and his eyes were blurry. He looked down at the fuel gauges. Less than one-eighth remained in the tanks. “What time is it?”
Sharon looked at her watch, set to San Francisco time. “It’s five minutes to six.”
The autopilot disengage light glowed a steady amber, as it had done for the last three hours. Berry felt an irrational anger at the malfunctioning machine. “Sharon, take the wheel.”
She reached out and took the wheel in her hands.
Berry stretched his arms and legs, and rubbed his burning eyes. The life vest was becoming uncomfortable,
