The JOOD nodded and reached for the toggle switch to the bitch box. He posed the question to the senior officer in Combat and waited for a reply, tapping his fingers nervously on top of the gray box that housed the interior communications circuits. Finally, he looked back at Dunway. “Combat says it might be a contact.”
A shrieking roar rose from the flight deck nine stories below them. An aircraft a Tomcat, by the sound of it turning on the catapult. With a green deck and permission to launch aircraft, the air boss had moved ahead smartly. Dunway had only seconds left to stop it. He lunged for the bitch box.
It wasn’t enough time. Just as his hand touched the toggle switch, he heard the roar increase, then the sound of an aircraft accelerating down the catapult. It was followed four seconds later by the gentle thump of the steel piston ramming against the stops in the bow as the aircraft broke free of the shuttle and was hurled into the air. He looked over the small ledge that ran around the ship immediately under the windows and saw a Tomcat dip down out of view briefly, then rise up to grab altitude and speed.
“Red deck!” He turned the toggle switch loose without explanation.
That phrase alone would stop all flight operations until they had a chance to ascertain whether or not there was a contact immediately in their path.
He turned to look for the JOOD. The young man had disappeared from beside the radar repeater and was standing in the port bridge wing, binoculars glued to his eyes.
Dunway saw his face turn pale. The JOOD dropped the binoculars, turned, and shouted, “Small vessel dead ahead, sir!”
“What’s her course?” He hoped against hope that it would clear their path by the time they got to it.
“Bearing constant, range decreasing. She’s bow-on to us, sir.”
“Hard right rudder.” Dunway whirled toward the conning officer. “Now, mister!”
The conning officer repeated the order, uncertain as to exactly why it had been given but instantly knowing this was no time for discussion.
Dunway stepped behind the helmsman, saw him spin the giant wheel quickly to the right to the stops.
Dunway moved forward again, positioning himself immediately underneath the course repeater located in the center of the ship overhead. He watched the needle, praying for it to move faster, knowing it wouldn’t.
Turning the ship, even at maximum rudder, was like maneuvering an office building.
He looked back ahead again. There. Finally visible to the naked eye, the small, rickety craft came into view. It was no more than a dot, a black mark against the blue waves and whitecaps. Dunway reached for his binoculars and held them to his eyes. A rust bucket. She was riding low on the water, an open vessel with no powerhouse or other cover in her. Little more than a lake boat, he would have thought.
But jam-packed with people, hanging all over each other and even spilling over the sides to hold on to the gunwales, their legs dangling in the water. Badly overloaded, hardly seaworthy, and directly in their path.
He glanced back upward, saw the course repeater notch slowly to the right, gave another order. “Starboard engines, back full. Port engines, ahead full.” The combination of a backing bell on the starboard shaft and a full- ahead bell on the port shaft would steepen their turn. Not by much this early in the evolution, but perhaps by enough.
But even engine orders aren’t instantaneous. They were given to the lee helmsman, who relayed the command down to his counterpart in main Engineering. Then, the steam valves were slowly rotated to adjust the speed of the turbine on that shaft, again introducing a delay.
Furthermore, the giant turbines that drove the four shafts of the ship did not respond instantaneously either. It all took time. Too much time.
“What the hell’s going on?” the CO of the ship snapped.
When had he left the bridge wing, Dunway wondered.
How long had he been standing there? The man’s face was now suffused with rage, his training session interrupted and emergency maneuvers taking place on his bridge without his having been informed.
“Contact directly in our path. Captain,” Dunway said quickly. He ran through the normal litany of course and speed, pointing the contact out to the captain, his eyes still fixed on the course repeater as it clicked over one more notch. Maybe enough maybe not. If it weren’t, it didn’t matter what the captain of the ship thought of him. His career was dead.
The captain snapped his gaze forward, finally spotting the small craft.
His jaw dropped. Dunway noted the look of horror on his face with sour satisfaction. It was time the aviators realized that life at twenty knots could be just as dangerous as life at Mach 1.
Dunway could see the faces now, make out the details of clothing and expressions. The ship was still turning.
Finally, as it drew closer, the small ship disappeared from view, the line of sight to it blocked by the massive flight deck. Had it been enough? Maybe, just barely. If it had been, the ship was just now scraping down the port side of Jefferson, a tiny gnat against the giant gray wall of the ship.
He wheeled on the operations specialist maintaining the plot board at the aft of the bridge. “Reports from lookouts?”
“Port lookout reports that oh, dear, sweet Jesus.” The man’s voice trailed off. “Sir, we hit them.”
“You’ll send the message now.”
Santana glared at Pamela Drake, daring her to defy his order.
“I won’t.” She remained seated, staring up at him. Even if she’d been standing, he would have towered over her, and she had no intention of allowing him to feel one iota of superiority. Best to stand her ground where she was. “You can’t force me to broadcast this report. Not while I’m being held hostage. Aguillar promised me that I could report the facts as I saw them. Quite frankly, I’m a bit fed up with being shuttled around under guard.”
Santana slammed his hand down on the table. “You are not in the United States, Miss Drake. We agreed to allow you to come here, but you were informed there would be certain restrictions on your ability to pursue matters independently. You took advantage of our hospitality, yet refused to acknowledge those conditions. Is this your idea of integrity?” He turned angrily away from her, staring out the window.
“I’ll report the story, but not some trumped-up fabrication you’ve prepared for me. And without access to witnesses, the ability to see the story developing myself, I have no way of judging the truth of what you’re telling me. You want your story told, fine. I’ll tell it. But my own way.”
Santana muttered something to his aide in a quick, staccato voice, the Spanish too rapid for her to follow. The aide nodded, walked out of the room, and returned shortly bearing a videotape. He inserted it into the VCR, turned the power on, then turned back toward Santana.
Santana wheeled on her. He pointed at the television screen. “Perhaps this will be a sufficiently important story for you to reconsider.” He gestured at the aide, who punched the play button.
The picture started out grainy, then gradually resolved into a clear pattern of light and dark. As the cameraman found his focal length, the dark shape in the middle of the screen became a small boat crammed with people. It plowed up and down the waves, rolling from side to side in the gentle swells and threatening to capsize even in the relatively calm seas. The camera panned to the right and refocused, and a large aircraft carrier came into view.
The shot was taken from almost sea level, and the ship looked like a massive, towering gray cliff. The cameraman zoomed in, focusing on the number on the side of the steel superstructure jutting up from the flight deck, the island.
Pamela recognized the number immediately. The USS Jefferson. Even if she hadn’t known that it was on presence patrols in the Caribbean, the hull number was indelibly ingrained in her memory.
The camera panned back to the small boat. The people in it now were standing up, gesturing, and Pamela could see their mouths opening as they screamed. Panic and as the cameraman zoomed back to include both the aircraft carrier and the small boat in one frame, she understood the reason why. Jefferson was bearing down on the small boat with all the inevitability and imponderability of an avalanche. In a battle between two ships for right-of- way, tonnage always wins, and there was no doubt in her mind as to the outcome of this encounter.
As she watched, the distance between the two ships gradually decreased.
The Jefferson’s aspect changed, becoming slightly more bow-on to her, but still Pamela could see that there was no way it could miss the other ship. She imagined the panic that must be taking place on Jefferson, as frantic in
