by Paul Lally
Portland?
That was the admiral’s idea.
As with any retired service member, especially if you’re a vice-admiral, you “know somebody.” And if not, then you “know somebody who knows somebody.”
In JJ’s case, he’s best-buddies with Frank Marchetti, executive vice-president of Bath Iron Works, a revered and highly respected New England shipyard that’s been in business since 1884.
The majority of their work has been for the Navy ever since 1890, when two iron gunboats slipped down the ways into the Kennebec River. Production continues to this day with their being lead contractor for the new Farragut-class guided missile destroyers.
Equipped with a newer version of a railgun, plus a wide array of guided missiles, the ships’ sophisticated AEGIS-2 system directs their every move. The new vessels will “supplement and support” the Zumwalt-class destroyers currently in the fleet, and eventually replace them.
Make no mistake, JJ knows a very important “somebody.”
Jack says over his shoulder. “How’d you two guys meet?”
“Which guy we talking about?”
“Frank Marchetti—the guy at Bath Iron.”
“A great story.”
“We don’t have that much time, sir.”
“I’ll cut to the chase.”
JJ leans forward in his seat directly behind Jack. who sits in the front of the cockpit. No tandem controls in this bird. Just him and his Garmin “Glass Cockpit” a portrait-display touchscreen containing data, including compass headings, rate-of-climb indicator, horizontal attitude indicator, tachometer, oil pressure, airspeed indicator, radio frequencies, and on and on.... a jumble of information to the uninitiated, but a crystal-clear and calming harbor of real time flight data for a pilot like Jack.
“Don’t want to distract you, son.”
“I’m fine.”
“So, anyhow, Frank and I go way back,” JJ begins.
“Uh, sir, we’re due to arrive in less than five.”
“Roger that. Okay, so we meet during acceptance trials for one of the Spruance-class tin-cans. Back in the mid-eighties, Bath Iron’s cranking them out like a cookie cutter.
“Frank’s still wet behind the ears, an expert in propulsion, but it’s his first time being at sea for this sort of thing. He’s seasick as a dog, trying to concentrate, but it’s not working. If the Navy doesn’t love the ship, back it goes to the builder until they do, right? Not to mention Frank’s ass in a sling if he doesn’t do his job. Right?
“Right.”
“Frank’s a newbie, and I’m a bored-out-of-my-gourd executive officer, itching for my own command, stuck with twiddling my thumbs while my skipper eyeballs the performance run.
“We’re almost done with the trials. All that’s left are high-speed turns with extreme rudder tests. Always a rodeo ride with the ship heeling back and forth like a drunk. Sort of fun for me. But when I take one look at Frank’s engine performance data sheet, it’s all over the place.
“I know the ship’s doing fine, but if the Navy sees his computerized records—which make no sense whatsoever—it’s going to look the opposite. So...” he hesitates.
“So?”
“So I take him aside and say, ‘Look, my friend, I’m going to double -check your readings. That okay with you?’ He nods, hands over his computer tablet, then his eyes widen, and he heads for the rail to puke his guts out.
“Wouldn’t you know at that same moment, we crank in full starboard rudder deflection? Hitting close to thirty-five knots by now, and the sea’s got a hefty swell.
“Frank’s feet lift off the deck...damned if he’s not going overboard!
I hustle over and grab his belt just as he pivots over the rail and yank him back just in time. With the speed and sea conditions we were experiencing, no telling what may have happened if I hadn’t.”
“Man not overboard. Good for you, sir.”
“Then I cooked his books.”
“The data?”
“Affirmative. If my skipper had seen those screwy numbers he’d have hit the roof, and then landed with both feet on top of Marchetti’s seasick head. Bath Iron would have gotten an earful, and who knows what might have happened to the guy’s career?”
“I assume you never got caught.”
“Not a chance. Happily-ever-afters all around. Six months later, I got my own command, and as far as I know, Frank never set foot on a ship again.
“Over the years, he rose up through the ranks like a skyrocket and practically runs the whole show nowadays—damn there she blows. Look at that monster! What a sight!”
JJ points down. From this height what looks like a gigantic, dark grey shoebox missing its lid lies at anchor in Portland Harbor.
But seen from ground level, it’s hardly a shoebox—or even a ship, for that matter. The odd-looking ABSD-3 (Advanced Base Sectional Dock) is an impressive 920-foot-long floating drydock that can lift up to 90,000 tons. Built during WW2. it’s made from ten ocean-going modules separately towed into place and then bolted together to form a rigid whole.
Once connected, the ABSD floods its pontoon tanks and submerges to allow a ship to enter for repair work. Once positioned directly over carefully arranged keel blocks, powerful pumps empty the drydock’s flooded pontoons and create enough buoyancy to lift the ship out of its watery element.
After the war, ten of these monster-sized floating drydocks continued serving the maritime industry. Down through the ages, they did their jobs, losing a section here, selling a section there, scrapping entire ones, using some for live-fire target practice, until the last of the ABSD’s still in service awaits as Jack prepares to land his chopper on the big “H” painted on the parking lot adjacent to the drydock.
Slowing to a hover at one hundred feet, he says to JJ, “Like the good old days, right, sir?”
“What days?”
“When you and your SEAL team would fast rope down a chopper for a mission. Too bad I don’t have one or you could make a grand entrance for sure.”
“Was a lot younger then.”
Tommy adds, “With younger knees too, not to mention hips.”
“And tender backs—hey, there’s Frank, right over there.”
A stocky figure awaits below, hand clapped to his hat to keep it from blowing away, legs spread wide. He’s wise enough not to look up, lest the rotor downwash throws grit in his eyes.
“Luck of the Irish,” Tommy says. “Am I right, JJ?”
“Affirmative your last. If Jack had started the ball rolling a month later, we’d be out of luck. They haven’t used their drydock since the late 90s when they finished off the last of the sonar dome replacements.
“It’s been rusting away ever since—like our Rock—only considerably uglier, I must say. And rustier. Ever since Bath Iron built their Land Transfer Facility upriver, the city’s been after them to get rid of it. Frank told me, when we’re done using it, it’s on its way to the breakers.”
Jack says, “The right tool for the job.”
“Not until Marchetti gives us the go-ahead. He’s got the final word on whether they can handle what we need done.”
“You sure he’s got all the specs and my proposal?” Jack says.
“He and his team’s been over them with a fine-tooth comb. It’s looking good.”
“That’s what I need to hear.” Jack lowers his cyclic and throttles back to land. “Going down, gentlemen.”
Frank Marchetti’s voice booms eerily off the 70-foot-high steel walls of the drydock as the four men walk along its interior length. Like a conga line, they snake back and forth around small puddles of rusty rainwater that dot the length of the cavernous, slab-sided canyon masquerading as a “vessel.”
Back in the 1990s, after sitting unused in Fort Eustis, Virginia for years, the Government donated the surplus drydock to the State of Maine, which in turn leased it to Bath Iron Works for a dollar a year.
But that was then, this is now. The towering struct
ure has become an eyesore for city planners who want to “revitalize” Portland’s down-at-the-heels waterfront.
“Must be catching,” Jack says.
“What is?” Frank says,
“Getting rid of the old and bringing in the new.”
“You mean your battleship getting her walking papers?”
“Just like your drydock.”
Frank sighs but has nothing to say.
Admiral Lewis says, “If these steel walls could talk, right?”
His friend nods. “During World War Two, the Navy repaired over seven thousand ships without having to tow them back to the states, because of drydocks like this one.”
“Impressive.”
They walk in silence for a bit, then Frank says, “I’m going to miss the old girl.”
“She’s not gone yet,” Jack says.
“I know, but come spring, off she goes to the Brownsville boys and their torches.” He grins. “Get a load of me calling a floating drydock a ‘her.’”
Tommy says, “Don’t see why not. I bet plenty of sailors did back then.”
Frank stops. “Back in the nineties, she saved Bath Iron’s bacon. We lost the Burke-class contract and had nothing but a few commercial shipping jobs. Without her, we’d be pounding sand upriver instead of building new ships.”
Jack says, “This’ll be her last hurrah, then. Fitting that she’s a World War Two veteran... fixing up a fellow veteran so she can sail again.”
Frank smiles. “I must confess I smiled when I read your proposal, Mr. Riley.”
“It’s ‘Jack,’ okay?”
“And I’m Frank.”
“And you smiled because....?”
“You have any idea how much it’s going to cost to get an eighty-year-old battleship seaworthy again?”
“As a matter of fact, I do. You saw the estimate. A competent naval architect and his design team drew up the specifications.”
Frank says nothing.
Jack clears his throat. “Excuse me, Mr. Marchetti, but two hundred fifty million dollars is not something to sneeze at.”
“Agree totally. And look, I know you had a lot of talented folks pondering the feasibility of this refit, but...” Frank points to row upon row of what look like railroad ties of varying lengths that line the side walls. “See those things over there?”
“Yes.”
“Normally it takes a day to position keel blocks according to a ship’s hull dimensions. But I’m guessing it’ll take at least three days to get those things lined up to fit a ship the size of a Montana-class battleship. And that’s just for starters.”
Jack grins and rubs his hands. He can’t help it. “So you’re on board with my—with our—plan to get her seaworthy? That’s terrific. We can—”
Frank raises his hand like a traffic cop. “—like I was saying, once her hull’s out of the water, the truth is going to come along with it. There’s sure to be hull-breaches, corrosion issues, wiring issues—not to mention adding your cockamamy Azipods.”
JJ snaps, “No choice in the matter. Museum ships are legally forbidden to restore functional propulsion.”
“Part of their original agreement with us.” Tommy adds.
“So the workaround is Azipod thrusters?”
Jack says. “Helsinki’s got an order for three of their XLs. Top priority.”
“What about the wiring?”
“Contracted with them to do that, too. Going full DC-direct. Work in some supercapacitor storage, too. Much more efficient. ”
Frank’s jaw drops slightly. “You did all this before you even knew we could accommodate you?”
“Some things are meant to be, Mr. Marchetti. This cruise happens to be one of them.”
Frank looks at the three men the same way you’d look at something you’re not quite sure is real. He shakes his head slightly, as if to clear his mind of what he’s just heard. Apparently, it doesn’t work, because he doffs his hat and scrubs his close-cropped gray-haired crewcut to see if that helps.
“Look,” Tommy weighs in. “We’ve taken damned good care of her ever since we got her. She’s going to pass with flying colors. I just know it.”
“Don’t doubt that, Mr. Riley.”
“It’s Tommy, okay? Like Jack, here. We’re a package deal.”
“Okay—but like I was saying, you don’t know what you’re getting into until you get into it. I’m sure that naval architect guy and his folks knew what they’re doing.”
“They did two inspection dives, and three internal evaluations.” Jack says.
“I know, and I saw the photos you sent. All I’m saying is that Bath Iron Works knows what it’s doing too. Admittedly, this is one hell of job for one hell of a ship, but in the end, depending on how many cans of worms we find once we start looking, she may or may not be able to head out to sea at all.”
JJ draws himself up straight. “Notwithstanding the unexpected can of worms or two, what about our proposed timeline? Reasonable?”
“It’s going to be ‘All hands on deck’ for sure, and that part’s in your favor. We’re smack in the middle of transitioning to a new missile frigate up at the yards, so we’ll have available manpower for at least ninety days. But fellas, like I said—”
“—I know,” Tommy says. “You don’t know what you’ve got until you get her out of the water.”
Jack says, “Only one way to find out. Ready?”
“Yes, but with one condition.”
“Name it.”
“Bring your checkbook. You’re going to need it.”
“How big a shipment?” Iván Zambadas says.
The electronically distorted voice on the other end sounds like a squirrel squeaking. It’s all Iván can do to keep from laughing, but he dares not.
The military-grade voice scrambler on his smartphone works to perfection in both directions, shifting pitch, overtones, and altering other features of the human voice. No way in a million years can anyone ever figure out who’s doing the talking, or where that person is.
For the record, Iván’s standing in an open field staring at the dismembered bodies of six Los Cobras gang members, who mistakenly thought they could do freelance work for another cartel. And were doing so at the expense of Señor Garcia’s northern operations.
Until two hours earlier, that is, when Vargas’s “tactical response team” kidnapped them, drove them out here, and promptly executed them. What remains are the severed arms, legs, heads, and trunks of six bodies cut up with machetes like chickens at a slaughterhouse.
Iván signals to two men wearing five-gallon “Indian” water tanks strapped on their backs, like the ones firefighters use to fight brush fires. The men nod in understanding and start hosing down the body parts. Two other team members wear rubber gloves and facemasks to stuff the freshly washed body parts into black trash bags.
Vargas likes things messy, Iván does not.
And because he’s overseeing this part of the “disposal” instead of that bastard interloper, he will make sure it’s completed to his exacting requirements. That said, why should he even be out here in the first place? The number two man in the business dealing with cut-up bodies like your friendly neighborhood butcher.
Absolutamente no!
But when Señor Garcia says, “Do me a favor” you do so without questioning the reason.
Of course, Iván knows the reason without being told. He’s got more spies than a whore has tricks. At this very moment, Garcia’s attending an “important meeting” with Vargas in the underground processing labs in Cancún, where the fentanyl/heroin is being processed in bulk.
It’s taken a while to reach this milestone—Vargas, as usual, lied through his teeth about delivery dates—but soon, very soon it will be like the gringos’ Alaskan pipeline. Only instead of black crude, they’ll be pumping white death into America.
The squirrel-sounding voice on the speakerphone says, “Are you still there?”
“Si, just finishing up some u
nfinished business.”
“I want to know about—”
“Relax, looks like they’re ramping up at last.”
“When can I—.”
“—Not yet. Everyone is too vigilant. On edge. Watching. Besides, I don’t even know the distribution chain yet.”
“Let the gringos figure that out. It’s their country not ours.”
“It will be ours too, and for good, if we succeed, my friend.”
A long wait. Iván bites his tongue. When you’re about to set a hook in a fish, you don’t yank on the line until you’re sure it’s taken the bait. And this is one very important fish.
“You had better be right.”
“The same is true for you,” Iván says.
“I have never failed yet.”
The voice at the other end is attached to an SIU (Sensitive Investigative Unit) agent, a prominent police officer who works for the Seguridad Publica y Proteccion de la Comunidad in Campeche. He’d in the very same building, where tonight, six severed heads will be lined up like bowling balls on the front steps. A stark reminder of who exactly runs this town—and what happens if you forget.
As for the rest of the Los Cobras gang members’ body parts, the security team will scatter them across town during the night, like dusting a cake after it comes out of the oven. That way, everybody knows who’s boss.
Including the SIU agent.
Recruited by America’s DEA (Drug Enforcement Agency), trustworthy, highly intelligent soldiers and police officers like him are the Mexican counterpart in the war on drugs.
Of strong moral character, having passed background checks, drug screening, and lie detector tests, they “work under the guidance and support of the DEA.” These heroic men are incapable of corruption.
Especially this one.
Which is why Iván must make his deceitful moves with great care.
“When do you think I can alert them?” the SIU agent finally asks.
“We’ve got at least two more months. That’s what they’re telling me.”
