by Paul Lally
“I plan to observe from here, along with Lieutenant Colonel Williston—that is, if you care to?”
“That would make my day, sir.” CW leans against the coaming. “Fire when ready, guys.”
“Aye, aye, colonel,” Tommy says.
Hector Garcia paces the perimeter of his Olympic-sized swimming pool, screaming into his phone at his on-the-ground contact in Puerto Morelos. Despite his boss’s understandable fury, the contact remains polite but insistent.
No cigarette boats have returned.
Not a single one.
The last radio transmission received ended with them saying they were taking fire from the battleship.
“Nothing since?”
“No, sir.”
“Not from any of them?”
A long pause. That’s answer enough, Garcia ends the call.
Nothing—not a single word—since Miguel announced his rescue, that he was “coming home,” but then broke off in mid-sentence. His word choice touched Garcia’s heart and still makes him smile.
“Home” indeed.
He was absolutely right to trust the future of his drug business to this young Maya instead of Iván. Who gives a good shit if Miguel’s not pure blood? Since when did blood have anything to do with running a successful business?
Either you have the gift...or you don’t. Gay, straight, black, white, none of that matters to Hector Garcia. Oh, to be sure, it matters to Iván. What a waste of time to think that smooth-talking, two-faced, light-skinned card shark could have shouldered the responsibility of this multi-million—almost a billion, if all goes right—drug business.
He dials a new number.
“Where are you?”
“On our way now, papi. Little Hector had soccer practice.”
“Miguel’s due any minute.”
Adriana’s voice breaks slightly in relief. “I was so worried.”
“No need anymore. All will be well.”
“Yo espero que sí.”
“I don’t think so, I know so. Now, tell me, how’d he do?”
“Who?”
“My grandson, of course.”
“They finally let him play goalie. He loves it.”
“Bueno.”
“Adios, papi.”
“Te veo pronto,”
Stanley swings open the Welin breech plug of Gun #2, a massive, machined piece of threaded steel designed to absorb the enormous pressure of firing a 1200-pound, high-explosive projectile twenty-five miles through the air to obliterate a target. In this case, the heavily protected compound of Hector Garcia and any human beings unfortunate enough to find themselves there when the rounds arrive.
Once again, Stanley’s left arm’s encased in the thick cotton sleeve. He brandishes it in the air and shouts, “Time to wipe the baby’s ass!”
The others laugh as he polishes the breech base—nicknamed the “mushroom” because of its dome-like shape—clean of any residue that may have accumulated since they used the sixteen-incher to take down the oil rig.
Time to take down flesh and blood instead.
“Rock the cradle, Charlie!” Stanley shouts.
More smiles at their gun captain’s cleverness as Charlie, the cradle operator, lowers the hinged spanning tray.
“Feeding time!” Stanley shouts.
The rammer, a Battleship Boy in his mid-sixties, stripped to a T-shirt in the hot, confined space, yanks on a lever to trigger a ramming rod that shoves the heavy projectile deep into the breech. Stanley leans over and pokes his head inside like a circus lion tamer to double-check its position.
At least that’s how Jack imagines yet another of the multiple functions taking place almost simultaneously inside the turret. Never having been in such a place when it was in full swing, it seems like a lethal dance that everyone knows the steps but him.
Especially his father, acting as turret captain, standing beside him, hands resting comfortably on the manual controls providing range, elevation, and bearing to the single gun now being loaded by a mix of old men and not-so-old men.
Satisfied the projectile’s seated correctly, Stanley spins around and hollers, “Doors UP!”
Heavy steel shuttle doors CLANG open like the jaws of a monster alligator. Inside its gaping “jaws” rest three polyester and silk-jacketed cylinders of high explosives.
The cradle operator, a Battleship Boy, closer to Jack’s age, and Stanley tumble them onto the cradle, snug them up as best they can, considering each one weighs over a hundred pounds, then tumble down three more, identical in shape and size for a total of six.
“Open wide,” Stanley hollers.
The rammer shoves over six hundred pounds of propellant into the breech’s gaping maw. Stanley signals him to stop when the last of the bags is precisely six inches ahead of the mushroom head.
When he closes the breech plug, if it’s any further away, the ignition pad may not detonate, and the gun will misfire. If that happens, he’ll have to remove the spent combination primer and put in a new one. But if that one doesn’t work—and the odds are it won’t. These are old guns, remember—then they’re stuck waiting for a solid half-hour before opening it again.
Who knows where the target will be by then?
Thank God, the fit’s perfect. Stanley indicates with an “okay” sign and a huge grin.
The spanning tray retracts to its proper position, Stanley makes a final check, swings the counterweighted breech up, locks it in place, pirouettes around and proudly shouts, “Ready to fire!”
Now it’s Tommy’s turn.
Back in the Rock’s Vietnam days, the Mark 8 Range Keeper computer did all the heavy lifting. The electromechanical machine used a complex assortment of cams, levers, switches and magnetic relays to compute target range, bearing, the Coriolis effect, internal and external ballistics, parallax correction, powder charge weight and temperature, and much more, all at once, while continuously updating the data as the ship rose and fell in the waves.
Amazing that it would perform so well, minus transistors, diodes, hard drives or any other fancy electronic components. That world was yet to come.
Today, that world has arrived, thanks to Commander Goldstein’s team. Their drone’s eagle-like vision coupled with satellite triangulation, has calculated those same target elements and generated a specific list of parameters that Tommy is sweating bullets to manually enter into the turret’s gun director in front of him.
He squints and wipes the sweat out of his eyes. “Do me a favor?”
“Name it,” Jack says.
“Read me off the rest of the list on this thing. My eyes are for shit in this light.”
Tommy hands him a palm-sized device that resembles a smart phone, given to him by one of Goldstein’s team just before he entered the turret. No time for the technician to explain how to operate it. All Tommy has to do is enter the drone-supplied targeting data that’s scrolling across the tiny screen into the Mark 8.
Jack squints, puts on his readers, then dictates the drug lord’s target data, while Tommy laboriously enters it into the Mark 8 by clicking and clacking on an ancient-looking manual keyboard.
From the modern to the ancient, but what the hell, as long as it works, right?
Garcia’s death sentence includes:
Gun elevation 30.334 degrees
Range 27,544 yards (15.65 miles)
Muzzle velocity 2688 fps.
ETPF (Estimated Time of Projectile Flight): 24.334 seconds
While Tommy types, the machinery responds by elevating the barrel of the 16-inch/45 Mark 7 to the proper angle, while simultaneously training the turret 15.21 degrees to starboard. No need to adjust any further because Captain Koga’s electronically linked the Rock’s GPS with the Azipods to keep the battleship essentially motionless for the coup de grace.
“Need this thing back?” Jack says.
Tommy shakes his head and steps over to a pedestal with four brass pistol grips; three on top, each connected to a specific gun, wi
th the fourth pistol grip, directly beneath, used for salvo only.
At first, Tommy takes hold of the center grip on top, connected to Stanley’s gun. Then...
“To hell with this.”
He grabs the salvo grip, rubs his thumb over the polished metal surface and slides his finger over the trigger.
“Stand by to fire!” he shouts.
“Aye, aye!” Stanley says.
“Party’s over, Garcia,” Tommy says, and squeezes the trigger.
A 16-inch HC (High Capacity) shell tops the scales at 1600 pounds of deadly force. But without six, 110-pound “bags” of propellant to blast it out of the muzzle, it’s a chunk of iron taking up valuable real estate in the breech.
But the instant Tommy Riley squeezes the “salvo” trigger, the electric igniter sets off the ten pound black power “patch” sewed onto on the back of bag #1, which in turn ignites the nitrocellulose.
A millisecond later the five additional bags in front “sympathetically ignite” creating a ripple effect that shoves the heavy round up the rifled barrel, spinning faster and faster as it reaches a speed of 2,500 feet per second and BLASTS out into the late afternoon air.
As it sails off on its 24-second journey to Garcia’s compound, the gun barrel recoils four feet from the blast. Nobody pays attention inside Turret 4, other than making sure he’s not in the way. Other than that, Tommy and the guys are too busy preparing to load the next round, already on its way up from the projectile flat, while six more bags ascend from the powder flat.
Like dueling elevators in a skyscraper of death, both shell and propellant rise simultaneously from the depths of the Rock—some would say from the very heart of the ship: its main armament.
Topside, the Battleship Boys patiently await.
If you’re not one of them, or any kind of sailor for that matter, then the function of a ship is to transport animate and inanimate cargo across both fresh and saltwater, from here to there.
That’s it.
But if you make your living from the sea, then it’s a different story. For instance, a ship like the Rock has more than a “here-to-there” function for old salts like Tommy Riley and JJ. Their battleship has a life unto itself.
In moments like the one happening in Turret #4, form and function merge. Bristling with weaponry, the Rock’s a warship for sure, but also one filled with teeming life. So much so, that it’s impossible for her sailors to be—or any other ship for that matter—an “it.”
“It’s” always and forever going to be a “she.”
And should you think it odd that a female should be spewing death and destruction from a 16-inch diameter barrel toward Hector Garcia’s compound, then you need to read up on Joan of Arc, Hangaku Gozen, Joanna of Flanders, Running Eagle, Caterina Sagurana, and Calamity Jane, to name just a few women who changed the world for the better by getting rid of those determined to make it worse.
Women who knew how to how to strap on armor, how to pick up a pike, a sword, a gun, a club, and defend what needed defending, be it their children, their faith, or their nation. More importantly, they knew how to lead others to do so. They inspired, invigorated, and instigated because they did so for the right reasons. Not self-aggrandizement, not unlawful gain, but for sake of restoring peaceful accord.
Unfortunately, the Rock’s 16-inch HC rounds can’t accomplish something like that.
They’ll not halt the relentless flow of addictive drugs from Mexico and South America into the United States. Nor will they end the discord of millions enslaved to the demands of the body. That will continue as long as drug lord scumbags get away with murder, while murdering others.
But if Commander Goldstein’s targeting data is to be trusted and Tommy Riley’s fingers confident of entering the correct data into the range finder to get a final firing solution, Señor Hector Garcia is about to feel the wrath of a 68,000-ton woman scorned.
It’s not Adriana’s fault that Little Hector made a miraculous save in the final seconds of regular play and won the game. From the way the nine-year-old’s soccer teammates whooped and hollered and swarmed the field you would have thought they’d just won the World Cup.
The joyful celebration took time. The lining up and shaking hands with the opposing team took time. The backslapping and laughing as the boys dispersed to their respective parents and friends ate up the clock.
From long habit, Adriana makes a point of ignoring her Ballon Bleu de Cartier wristwatch, whose relentlessly ticking second hand tells her she’s late for being at her father’s house as promised.
But to hell with that.
At the moment, cheering and applauding happy boys who play soccer are far more important. Especially her son.
That said, that’s quite a wristwatch she’s ignoring. The rose-gold, diamond-encrusted, purple patent leather alligator strap creation cost just over $26,000. She wears it because it was an anniversary gift from her late husband two years ago. Price never mattered to Ramòn. Rich or poor, he was a happy man. Not a stagecoach driver lashing the horses all the time like Miguel. But then again, Ramòn had a normal upbringing like she did, while Miguel watched helplessly as assassins murdered his entire family in cold blood before his horrified eyes.
“Tired?” she says to young Hector.
No response.
No wonder.
Earbuds firmly in place, his neon-green Nikes sneakers crisscrossed and resting on the dash, his head bobbing back and forth to music, all she can hear is the tinny beat-beat-beat of the percussion coming from the tiny earbuds.
God only knows what that’s doing to the boy’s hearing.
Adriana drives along 108 South to the compound, studiously obeying the speed limit. No need to get another ticket. True, her father fixes them like he would a leaky faucet, but no need to antagonize the policia.
Still, she’s terribly late and maybe it wouldn’t hurt if she accelerated her Maserati Gran Turismo just a little. She’s nearly there. Maybe Papi will think she’s been racing to see him all along.
She glances down at the speedometer to make sure it’s just ten miles over the limit when the flash appears in her peripheral vision. She looks up quickly.
“Mama?”
Hector’s pointing to a cloud of yellowish-orange smoke billowing up from her father’s compound less than a half-mile ahead. Then the thudding BOOM of the sound wave arrives.
Soon after, another FLASH followed by another BOOM.
Adriana takes her foot off the accelerator and guides the car to a stop in the breakdown lane. Other cars continue to pass, but slowly, as their drivers, too, watch the repeated explosions. For them it’s a mystery.
Not for her.
After a lifetime of living with men who do what her father does, with a husband who did the same, and now with a man who’s just as bad as they are but loves her for love’s sake and little Hector too, she instinctively knows this is not some rival cartel wreaking havoc. They don’t have that kind of firepower, let alone the nerve to challenge her father’s mastery of the drug trade.
No, the time has come for gringos to even the score.
More explosions in the compound. About every forty seconds, like clockwork. But Adriana’s not counting rate-of-fire intervals on her expensive watch.
Instead, she’s wondering how much cash she can get her hands on back at her apartment, and if she can convince her father’s personal pilot to fly their Gulfstream IV south to Caracas until all this blows over. If it blows over, that is.
He’ll agree. He’s got to. Once the head of the house is gone, the wolves will close in on what’s left—including a multi-million dollar jet and the crew that goes with it. Better to fly away.
Can her Miguel stop such a thing from happening?
She shakes her head. He’s too new to the game, too new to the art of being a leader instead of a hungry prince. Still, he loves her, and she loves him. Can she convince him to come with her to Caracas? Leave all this behind? She shakes her head again. When wol
ves have the scent, they don’t stop hunting until they make the kill.
“Mama, what’s happening? That’s abuelo’s house.”
She puts the Maserati in reverse.
“Not anymore.”
On the drone’s video display back on the Rock, the 16-inch HC projectiles are busy blasting fifty-foot-wide craters in Garcia’s compound. Observed from 3000 feet AGL, the effect is not as dramatic as what’s happening on the ground.
The drug lord’s Olympic-size swimming pool is gone, the main house is gone, and the garage is half-gone. The explosions also fractured natural gas lines feeding the house, adding flaming fury to the fires.
“Think we got him, skipper?” Sergeant Wright says.
Commander Goldstein contemplates the chaos. “Not a clue, but I hope so.”
“I got twenty says we did.”
“You’re on—why the smile?”
“I’m thinking either way, after what we did to those sons-of-a-bitches today, Garcia and his cartel are out of business.”
“We both win, you mean.”
“Affirmative, ma’am.”
An hour later in the comm center, a pleased-as-punch Admiral Lewis orders Commander Goldstein to share the drone’s video feed with Bob Martin, who stands beside him, along with Robbie, his ever-present cameraman chewing his ever-present gum and smiling slightly as he looks around, contemplating composition and framing, ever the artist looking for the picture worth a thousand words..
“May I ask why they’re here, sir?” Goldstein says.
“We’ve got a story that needs telling, and Mr. Martin, here, is just the man to tell it.”
“Who to?”
“The world.”
“Dinner is served, gentlemen,” a beaming Bob Martin says that evening to the principal players gathered in the officers’ wardroom for a video screening of an astonishing story of a cast-aside and forgotten Montana-class battleship called back to arms, along with a complement of gray-haired, potbellied, balding ancient mariners who volunteer to help a determined Delta Force strike team rescue American and Mexican hostages trapped deep in the heart of drug cartel country.
