Final Flight

“Did the water harm them?” Qazi heard Ali say.

“Oh no,” Jarvis replied. He tilted his gas mask away from his face and sniffed experimentally, then removed it. “They’re waterproof so they can be carried on external bomb racks through rain and snow and still function.” He was examining one of the devices under a powerful flashlight. The sheen of moisture on the top of his bald head glistened occasionally in the stray light reflecting from the water’s surface. He spread his legs and lowered his gut like a sumo wrestler. He used a screwdriver on an access plate. In seconds he had it off and was shining a flashlight into the interior of the weapon. “Hail wouldn’t do the covering on the radar transceiver in the nose any good, of course,” Jarvis continued softly, “but a little bath shouldn’t hurt anything. As long as these access panels were properly fitted …”He knelt in the water and bent his head down so he could get a better view inside the weapon.

He looked up at Noora. She had removed her mask too and was using her hand to fluff her hair. “This one looks fine.” He searched her face expectantly and was rewarded. A trace of a smile lifted the corners of her lips. His eyes flicked down and he grinned nervously as he moved toward the next bomb.

“Put this one on a dolly and connect your device to it before you check the others,” Qazi said.

They positioned a bomb cart beside the weapon and four of them surrounded it, two on the nose and two on the tail. There were no good handholds, but they were running out of time. Jarvis danced from foot to foot, chanting, “Oh, don’t drop it. Please, don’t drop it …”

They got it two inches out of the cradle and set it back down. It was too heavy. “Use a pulley,” Qazi said.

On the end of the chain was a piece of metal that fitted into the two metal eyes on top of the weapon. These eyes would fit up into an airplane’s bomb rack where two hooks would mate the weapon to the plane. With the mechanical advantage provided by the pulley, it only took two men pulling on the chain to lift the weapon from its cradle and lower it gently onto the dolly.

The water lapped at the bottom of the weapon. Jarvis opened the access panel and used strapping tape to secure the trigger device he had constructed to the top of the weapon. Then he ran two wires with alligator clips on the ends from the device through the access panel. He used the flashlight to attach the wires inside the weapon. When he was finished, he stood back as Qazi bent to look inside.

The interior of the weapon was a maze. Qazi had expected this. He tried to remember exactly what he was looking for. Yes, that clip was on the wire leading from the battery. And this other clip was on the wire bundles that led to the detonators. Jarvis had had to scrape some insulation from both wires to affix the clips.

“Satisfactory.” He straightened and found himself looking at Admiral Parker, whose face was still obscured behind his gas mask. “I’m sorry, Admiral. But we need these weapons.”

Parker turned away. He seemed to be listening.

Now Qazi heard it too, a faint rumbling. What was that?

Qazi pointed his flashlight at the water contact with the doorway. The water was moving, ever so slightly. But it should move as the ship rocked at anchor. Parker was looking at the water too. Qazi felt the deck beneath his feet tremble.

Now he understood. The rumble had been the anchor chain running out. The ship was underway!

25

The officer-of-the-deck of the Aegis-class cruiser, USS Gettysburg, anchored three miles north of the United States, was momentarily confused. The carrier’s lights were moving in relation to him. The lookout on the port wing of the bridge had called it to his attention. The lights of the carrier had only been visible for the last fifteen minutes, since the rain had slackened. He quickly scanned the wind-direction indicator to see if the wind had changed; that would cause the ships to swing on their anchors. No. Perhaps his ship was moving, dragging its anchor — unlikely, since the wind velocity had also eased. But … He swung the alidade to the lighthouse at the entrance to Naples Harbor, just visible through the rain, and noted the bearing. He checked another point a little further up the coast. The bearings were the same numbers as in the pass-down log, the same numbers the radar operator in Combat had been verifying all evening. His ship was still stationary. But the carrier wasn’t.

“Bridge, Combat.” It was the squawk box, on this class of ships known as the Internal Voice Communication System which combined a telephone, a speaker system at selected locations, and all of the internal networks in the ship.

“Bridge, aye.”

“The United States is underway. We have them headed course Two Five Zero at four knots on radar.” The watch officer in Combat had established a track on the SPS-55 radar, which was operating.

The carrier was heading directly into the prevailing wind, in the same direction she had been pointing as she rode at her anchor. “Keep tracking her and call her up. Find out if we’ve missed something. Have someone check the messages.” Lieutenant (jg) Epley already suspected the worst. Somehow, some way, a message notifying the cruiser of a planned ship movement had gone astray. If so, he thought glumly, there would be absolute hell to pay. Somebody had dropped the ball rather spectacularly.

“Aye aye, sir.”

The OOD looked again through the water-streaked bridge window at the carrier’s moving lights as he twirled the handle on the “growler,” an old-fashioned intercom box. He could just hear the growler sounding in the captain’s cabin directly beneath the bridge.

“Captain.” The Old Man sounded half asleep. No doubt he was.

“Sir, this is the OOD. The United States seems to be underway. There’s no mention—”

“What?” The captain was fully awake now.

“Yessir. She’s moving. Combat verifies on radar.”

“Have you called her on the bridge-to-bridge?”

“Not yet, sir. Combat—”

“I’ll be right there.” The connection broke.

Epley pointed his binoculars at the carrier. He could see the masthead lights and the floodlights around the top of the island, though his view was slightly out of focus with all this moisture in the air.

“Bridge, Combat. Her speed is up to seven knots. No answer to our calls on Fleet Tactical or Navy Red.” Fleet Tactical was a clear voice UHF circuit. Navy Red, or Fleet Secure, was an encrypted voice circuit.

“Keep trying.”

“Watch to see if she turns,” the OOD told the port lookout and his quartermaster, who had already noted the time and event in the log.

The captain arrived on the bridge in less than a minute. He carried his shoes in his hand and tossed them on his chair. He wasted only ten seconds verifying that the United States was indeed underway, then grabbed the Navy Red radiotelephone. No answer. He called Combat and found they had had no luck either. He stuck his head out of the port bridge-wing doorway and yelled to the signalman to try and raise the carrier with his flashing light, then spent a tense, unhappy minute on the phone with the cruiser’s operations officer, who was as mystified as he was. The navigator was equally perplexed.

“Set the special sea and anchor detail, Mr. Epley. We’re going to see how fast we can get underway. We can’t let the flagship just steam off over the goddamned horizon without us. Then call the communications officer and tell him I want to see him here on the bridge in precisely sixty seconds.” He sat down in his chair and put on his shoes, fuming, “The goddamn flagship gets underway in the middle of the fucking night and no one aboard my ship knows jack about it. I’m going to get out of the goddamn navy and buy a pig farm.”

* * *

The call, when it came, was from Admiral Parker. The chief engineer summoned Jake to the telephone. He had been huddled with the navigator over a chart, plotting a course that would take the ship as far away from land as quickly as possible. The navigator had had to obtain the chart from his stateroom, since he couldn’t get up into