Nimitz Class

wave. Both of them were fifty miles out from ZULU ZULU (the Group Center) at the time. Hayler and Fife, however, had been about twenty-five miles out, and like Arkansas, had taken a sixty-foot wave. Unlike Arkansas, Ingraham had taken it right on the beam and very nearly capsized.

Of the missing six ships, not yet in comms, there appeared to be only five surface radar contacts close to ZULU ZULU. These were all stationary, or nearly so. By 2145 Arkansas’s surface picture was back in business, which partly clarified the situation for Captain Barry.

He could now see twelve other contacts from his ink picture, including himself. There were two SSN’s and five surface warships in good to reasonable shape, five others were floating, but unidentified, and still making way to the southwest, but out of comms.

One was missing.

At 2150, the ship’s broadcast of the Arkansas blared: “Radiation alarm! Radiation alarm! Clear the upper deck. Assume condition 1A. Activate pre-wetting. Decontamination parties close-up.” This official imperative ended with the traditional U.S. Navy roar of no-questions-asked, do-it-now urgency… “No shit!”

Within seconds all ventilation fans were crash-stopped. It took ten more minutes to get the ship properly isolated from the outside air, from the radioactive particles, which had set off the monitors. She was now like a huge, sealed cookie tin.

Every hatch, every flap, every external bulkhead door, every opening to the outside air was clipped hard home. Only then was it safe to bring in the gas-tight “citadel” ventilation to provide fresh air via special filters which would sift out all the radioactive particles. The system raised the pressure inside the citadel to slightly above atmospheric, and thus prevented any inward leakage of the lethal radioactive outside air. All drafts were headed OUT.

^{Radar picture from the Thomas Jefferson showing its position within the Carrier Battle Group, July 8, 2002}

As the ship swung away across the monsoon wind, and cleared the radioactive plume to the north, the upper-deck working parties began to power hose the decks with saltwater and bleach, standard procedure for clearing radioactive particles from every area in the path of a nuclear explosion. Monitoring parties accompanied the hose crews, checking every corner.

By 2155, Captain Barry was ready to take a break. He needed thinking space to assess what had happened. There had plainly been a nuclear detonation, and he desperately needed to find out which ship was missing. Six would not, or could not, answer, and only five were on his radar.

For a couple of minutes he stared at the screen, willing it to produce the sixth contact at the center of the group. But his space-age electronics were unable to tell him what he needed to know: who was missing?

He knew he would have to go back to basics, to what sailors call the “Mark I Eyeball.” He ordered a course change: “Conn…Captain…come left, two-three-five…flank speed…I am closing to make visual contact on the most northeast contact of the group ahead…that is track 6031…he may have no lights burning…check visual signaling lamps.”

By 2309, Captain Barry had seen what he needed to see with his own eyes, searching the dim, shadowy seas, probing the darkness to come alongside each of the four ships that showed up on his radar.

He was able to identify the huge 49,000-ton full-load fleet oiler Arctic, minor casualties only, radar and comms out, but 70 percent operational. He found the formidable 9,000-ton Ticonderoga Class guided-missile cruiser Port Royal, with ten dead, twenty injured, severe aerial damage, major structural damage in the stern area, including her harpoon battery and one helo, severe flooding in the hangar area.

He also found her sister ship, USS Vicksburg, which had taken the big wave fine on her starboard bow, no serious casualties, severe aerial damage, no significant structural damage. The O’Kane, as she lay stopped and listing in the water, was a floating wreck, in desperate need of aid. And he found the Spruance Class DD, sister ship to Hayler, the O’Bannon, many casualties, number not yet known, ship nearly capsized in the tidal wave, able to make way through the water but little else, severe damage topside and internal.

Captain Barry stared at his screen again, in shock, at the space where the carrier must have been. The radar made its familiar, emotionless, circular sweep. And still there was nothing where once the mighty warship had been. No one could see her. No one could speak to her. And no one could hear her. The Thomas Jefferson was gone.

As the senior officer in charge of the second most important warship in the Group, Captain Barry now ordered his communications office to access the satellite’s direct line to the U.S. Navy headquarters in Pearl Harbor, to Admiral Gene Sadowski, Commander-in-Chief, Pacific Command (CINCPAC).

The two men spoke for less than three minutes. The sentences were terse, two lifelong Naval officers communicating in the economical language of their trade. Within moments Admiral Sadowski had opened his private line to the Pentagon. It was 1318 local in Washington, D.C., as the Chief of Naval Operations, Admiral Scott F. Dunsmore, picked up his telephone.

“I regret to inform you, sir,” said Admiral Sadowski, “that the carrier Thomas Jefferson has been lost in what looks like a nuclear accident. All six thousand men on board appear to have perished.”

3

1320 Monday, July 8.

Admiral Scott Dunsmore had been an officer in the U.S. Navy for nearly forty years. He had served in warships all over the globe. His last command was of a Nimitz-Class carrier in the Gulf War, facing the missiles of Saddam Hussein.

He occupied his present position as the professional head of the Navy with the utmost distinction. The son of an illustrious Boston banking family, he was regarded as the successor to the present Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff.

Yet nothing, in all of his years as a warship and fleet commander, nothing in all of his years of examinations, degrees, and diplomas, nothing in all of his recent years rubbing shoulders with America’s most eminent politicians, had prepared Admiral Dunsmore to grasp the enormity of the words being uttered to him by Admiral Gene Sadowski…“All six thousand men on board appear to have perished.”

For ten seconds, maybe twenty, he said nothing, and tried to assemble his thoughts. The silence was so prolonged, Admiral Sadowski thought it might be another line of communication down. Dunsmore cleared his throat, searched for words, and just then there was a sharp tap on the door to his office and his senior assistant, a young lieutenant commander, burst in. “Admiral, I got NSA in Fort Meade on the line — Morgan in person — we got one big problem in the Arabian Sea. I have to talk with you. You want me to transfer that call to someone else?”

“Not for the moment,” replied the admiral. “Tell Admiral Morgan we’ll call him back as soon as I finish with this.” And then he addressed Admiral Sadowski for the first time. “Do you have a degree of certainty on that, Admiral?”

“I would not have called unless it was 100 percent, sir. One of our guided missile cruisers, Arkansas, has entered the area around the last known position of the carrier.

“He did so because his Combat Information Center was observing five contacts on the radar screen when there should have been six. He came alongside the five ships, all of which had sustained damage in an obvious nuclear explosion. There’s a lot of radioactive fallout.

“Captain Barry’s Arkansas has already compared his findings with other ships in the Battle Group. Their findings are identical. The Thomas Jefferson has vanished, in an area heavily contaminated with nuclear fallout. No one has seen any sign of wreckage, but the sonar operators were