* * *
We had steered, staying well off, by the island of Sicily, standing in the distance like nothing so much as a black sore festering in the blue sea. One wished it could sink into it, rather to leave nothing than this, and thus be put out of its misery; remembering, in my case, from NATO duty in Naples, from firsthand inspection, how the island was loaded with missiles. It happened on Isola di Linosa, lying about a third of the way between Africa and Sicily, and we took a boat in with a small party I had carefully selected. Very rugged hills covered with flourishing green grass and flowers of assorted colors, rising closely above a strip of powdery white beach of negligible depth. Nobody in sight. It was a pretty day, a gentle warmth flowing down from a sky where a few white billows of fat cumulus rode lazily against the azure. We could see the ship standing patiently out, gray-blue and immobile, sole lord of a gray-blue sea glittering in the still sunshine. A lookout had spotted them somewhere up there. Presently came from the heights their distinctive bleating sound. We looked up. A small herd of them, perhaps a dozen in number, had approached and stood just above us, their heads poked out in a leaning-over position, gazing straight down with a Parnassian hauteur and a contained curiosity at these visitors who had invaded what they seemed to regard as their private property. Then, dismissing us as of no interest, unimportant mortals, they pulled their heads back, bent, and began the serious business of munching the grass, in their digestive course following the green patches down the hill nearer to us, sure-footed on the steepish incline, ignoring us wholly. We stood conferring on the sand.
“Gunner,” I said, “do you think you could wrestle down a couple of those goats?”
“Well, sir,” Delaney said thoughtfully. “I’ve wrestled down goats before. But goats are a very tough animal, Captain.”
I looked at the huge Preston whom I had purposively brought along, as I had Delaney. “Then perhaps you should take Preston here with you. See if you can bring back two.”
“Two, sir?”
“A female and a male goat. I would appreciate that.”
A certain look of enigma held Delaney’s face. Then something like the remote glimmering of a comprehension—I could not be sure.
“Aye, sir. A nanny and a billy,” he gently corrected my goat terminology.
The gunner’s mate turned and picked four short lines out of the boat.
“Preston,” he said with the authority of his Missouri farm boy’s background, “bear in mind that goats are a very independent animal. They’re nobody’s patsies.”
The boatswain’s mate stood immense and impassive, as if it were beneath his dignity to counter any suggestion that he might have difficulty dealing with a goat. Delaney continued in educatory tones.
“What they are partial to is being scratched between the ears—not too hard. A goat takes that as a very friendly sign. Just keep scratching him there and you should be all right. I’ll do the tying while you do the holding—and the scratching. Got that, Boats? Between the ears.”
“Shall we get on with carrying out the captain’s order?” the boatswain’s mate said evenly. “Before they take off while we’re going to school about them?”
“Right. Let’s shove off.”
The gunner’s mate carrying the lines, the two men ascended the hill. The goats, hearing their approach, turned slowly and gazed at them, only lifting their heads from their munching, retreating not a step. Delaney and Preston came beside them. The gunner’s mate appeared to be sizing up each member of the goat-family herd, making his selection. I had the clear feeling that he had at least vaguely discerned my intention and was looking for the finest specimens.
Then it was as if the two men had disappeared among the goats. A certain amount of bleating and baa-ing drifted down to us on the beach. Presently the two sailors were coming down the hill, picking their way with their burdens through the rocks. Delaney was carrying the smaller—manifestly the nanny—around his neck. Preston had the other, larger one in his arms. The hooves of both animals were secured in a fairly loose but adequate fashion, using double half-hitches. They made it to the beach where we approached and stood studying them. They were not your garden-variety goat. They were stunningly beautiful animals, with long silky hair that seemed to be a complete spectrum, lovingly blended in patterned patchwork, as if by some seamstress of angel’s gifts, of the color brown: tan hairs, ochre hairs, chocolate, terra-cotta, coffee, sienna, mahogany, copper, umber, chestnut, Titian, all combining to form a rich and luxuriant pastiche of deep softness. Even in the sailors’ arms the animals had the nobility of bearing of a born aristocracy, a natural imperiousness. They seemed to have stepped out of some ancient tapestry of priceless provenance.
“Mr. Selmon?”
The j.g. unsheathed and commenced to run his radiac over the goats while Delaney and Preston each continued studiously and with a wise gentleness to scratch his particular ward in the approved manner, between the ears. We watched in silence, hearing the low clicking sounds of the counter’s emissions. The goats kept opening and closing their eyes, dreamily. As Selmon proceeded with his examination they turned their heads and observed him over their shoulders with melancholy and suspicious expressions. Selmon went over them meticulously, across their flanks, proceeding then to their necks. There he paused and looked intently at his meter. Then he ran the counter gently over their long-haired coats once more and back to their necks; again he paused and examined the meter. We waited for his verdict, watching him.
“Captain, we’re not intending to eat these goats, are we?” he asked.
“Certainly not, Mr. Selmon.”
“Then they’re okay, sir,” he said. “Nothing to worry about. What they have will soon disappear.”
I felt an unaccountable sense of triumph, as of an important victory; the more so that of these we had had few. We stood then admiring the goats, which had passed muster and appeared tolerably content in the arms of the two sailors.
“Look at her,” Delaney said proudly of his. “Just look at those tits, Captain.”
Had he guessed? I was certain not. “It’s time, Captain.” I turned, startled in my appraisal of the animals, to see Selmon looking at his radiac.
We loaded them into the boat, where they kicked a little, not very seriously, then, as Delaney and Preston steadied them in a kind of rocking motion, settled down, seeming not to mind too much the short sea journey to the ship. We got them up the Jacob’s ladder, where the gunner and the boatswain’s mate set them down on the quarterdeck. They planted their legs sturdily while the two sailors kept a half-holding, half-stroking hand on them. They looked studiously around at the ship’s ambience and baa-ed a little. Then remained peaceful, apparently convinced they were in not unfriendly hands, while sailors gathered to admire them where they stood now at ease, displaying themselves in a kind of holding of court, heads lifted in their natural haughtiness, above those ravishing coats, as if to say, “Look how perfectly beautiful we are.”
“Do goats get seasick, Delaney?” I asked him.
“Well, sir, to tell the truth I don’t rightly know. I’ve had plenty of goats,” he said. “But I’ve never taken them to sea. But a goat is a very tough animal.”
“Yes, you’ve told me.”
“We can always give them seasick pills,” the gunner’s mate said.
“Let’s billet them amidships,” I said.
“A good idea, sir.”
Shipfitter Travis went to work immediately building a pen for our two passengers. Doing our best for the goats, we situated this enclosure amidships, the least likely part of a vessel to induce seasickness. At first Gunner’s Mate Delaney assumed responsibility for their welfare. Then, as his garden duties grew, he asked around and discovered that Signalman Third Bixby, the farm girl from Iowa, knew more even than himself about goats; in her opinion, considerably more. “I raised goats. They require very special care,” she said, and took them firmly off Delaney’s hands, feeding them various fodders we pick up along
the way after Selmon has put his imprimatur on these gatherings with his counter, now and then giving those gorgeous coats a brush, walking them back and forth on the weather decks. They quickly got their sea legs, and soon followed her, without a leash, agilely up ladders, these perhaps seeming child’s play after their accustomed cliffs. “Goats are smart,” Bixby informed me one day when I came across the three of them on a stroll and was afforded a short progress report. “Sheep are dumb. A sheep would probably just have walked overboard long ago, not even knowing he was doing it.” Ship’s company seems glad to have aboard, safe and sound, at least two of the animals of the world. Their presence is a kind of comfort.
8
A Signal from Bosworth
Years since it had become obvious what the initial objective of both sides would be: that at least the two had in common, mirror images of strategy. This was simply to take out, in the first minutes of any conflict, the command, control, communications, and intelligence network (C3I) of the other. Otherwise known as “decapitation,” another of that lexicon which came so obscenely to dominate and corrupt the effective language of the latter years of the century. (In the mindless vulgarity of the time, colorful phrases were evoked to picture the flawless beauty of these acts: “cut off the head of the Soviet chicken,” as an instance, the authors of such metaphors smirking self-congratulatorily at their picturesqueness, as though speaking of some devilishly clever prank.) Decapitation: It was a relatively easy undertaking, though said by some to be easier for them than for us, due to their greater geography and dispersion. For them, the objective was to be achieved by launching simultaneously on Washington, D.C.; SAC Headquarters at Offutt Air Force Base, Omaha, Nebraska; the North American Aerospace Command (NORAD) in Cheyenne Mountain near Colorado Springs; three or four other backup places; and perhaps a dozen critical communications relay points including essential satellites, their locations all well known, their elimination a routine matter; to accomplish all of this requiring no more than thirty minutes at the extreme outside (if done entirely from their own territory), with a strong possibility that that figure could, with proper placement of launching platforms (submarines off American cities), be cut to fourteen minutes or even nine.
The idea was twofold and a genius of the manifest: (1) to remove the political-military leadership, the National Command Authority; and (2) aided by the Electromagnetic Pulse generated by a high-altitude burst, to leave remaining no means of communication through which to send retaliation orders even had there been anyone left to do so. Someone had speculated that the ideal time of all, the perfect time for the other side, would be when the President of the United States was delivering his annual State of the Union message, since on that occasion the entire American succession would be gathered in not just one city, Washington, D.C., but in a single room, the House of Representatives on Capitol Hill: fifteen constitutional successors to himself, from the Vice President clear through the Secretary of Housing and Urban Development and the Secretary of Transportation; present also would be the Joint Chiefs of Staff, who while not in the official succession would presumably be prepared if alive, the succession all dead, to take upon themselves, in the absence of any lawful provisions or authority, nonetheless to strike back in such a circumstance; parenthetically present also all members of both houses of the Congress. This wealth of potential usurpers to power gone, who then would anoint himself to give battle back? If he did how could he discover the various rituals—necessary ciphers, Go-Codes and the like—to accomplish a response? And if he did, how could he without any means of communication execute them? And if he found such means, would commanders on the other end follow instructions from this dubious and illegal source?
The whole proposition was so simple that it was everywhere taken for granted that whatever other ancillary strategies there might be, this was certain to be the principal one employed by whoever moved first. By the process of deductive reasoning, our having received no orders from anyone, in any place, one could come to no other conclusion than that this was precisely what had happened, that is to say, removal of all National Command Authority, along with the extermination of means of communications by both direct and EMP forces (though not at the State of the Union, that being always in January). One overwhelming imponderable remained: How had retaliation (if that, instead of first-strike, was indeed what it was) been achieved? Only two theories appeared plausible: first, that the authorities themselves had had sufficiently lightning reflexes to execute response even as the incoming missiles were upon them; or that, had these reflexes been found wanting, someone not on the above list but sufficiently highly placed to have access to the stipulated “rituals” had taken it upon himself in those crucial minutes, even seconds, that remained, to get off one general order before being obliterated along with all communications; thus achieving mutual decapitation. A hypothesis, whichever of the two starter mechanisms actually employed, supported by our own orders to launch having come from TSP (Trinity Security Procedures), both that designation and the ciphers containing the orders being held under the ultimate classification, known at the starting end by an irreducible handful of highest authorities, the ciphers changed daily and reserved exclusively for one of two purposes: to give orders to launch, to give orders not to launch; further supported by the cessation of all communications not long after our launchings.
To these various conclusions, their general tone supported both by the reports picked up by the Russian submarine commander and by the Bonne-fille’s radioman, the uninhabitability of Africa, established tentatively by our own shore incursions and conclusively, it appeared, by Lieutenant (jg) Selmon’s deeper one, added the final building block that installed in firm place my resolve not to take the ship to America; further, I had reached the sanguine determination that, abetted by such overwhelming evidence from such a variety of independent sources, I could now safely and with comparative ease win the men over to this inevitable position.
Then the signal from Bosworth arrived. A signal from that same origin and in that same encryption that had not reached us since that morning, seeming now so infinitely long ago though actually but six weeks, when it had instructed us to launch our Tomahawks high into the cold blue skies of the Barents Sea. From NCA: National Command Authority. Sent in TSP: Trinity Security Procedures.
* * *
From the beginning and continuing to the present moment, nothing had commanded more of our dedication—never, in truth, infringed by hopelessness, by disheartenment—than our efforts to bring forth responses from our communications system. I need hardly speak of its prodigious sophistication or belabor the technical aspects of its electronics, highly classified, unknown to the civilian world, even to whose highest experts its talents would have been wondrous . . . even to myself, accustomed to devices, tools, beyond the frontiers, still a marvel of capability, awesome. Manned constantly, in rotation on every frequency, with special attention to the channels known officially as Survivable Very Low Frequency Communications System, which had been brought to a level of performance that had seemed, beforehand, able to pick up whispers from the remotest places and to break through or around every known type of interference or defense, whether created by man or the elements. Originally pursued by the Navy, as I believe I have mentioned elsewhere, specifically to deal with what had been one of the most dangerous and frightening of problems—the difficulty in reaching a submerged nuclear-armed submarine in, let us say, the Sea of Okhotsk, for purposes, for example, of instructing it to unleash its payload—or, conversely, not to unleash it—these channels, as refined, exquisitely perfected I should put it, by Navy persistence, breakthroughs in the art, had become the least fallible method for long-distance communications the insistent genius of man had yet devised.
It was on one of these that it came through.
The signal was sent at 1700, no one remarking then the precision of the time, no reason to do so. It came in with full audibility, free of distortion, clear and clean. The fr
equency was 26.125 kHz, which our confidential VLF manual readily identified as belonging to a global Navy Communications Center situated in Bosworth, Missouri, used primarily we knew to communicate with those same submerged U.S. ballistic-missile submarines. The message when broken reading in entirety:
FLASH 171700Z
FM: NCA
TO: ALL SHIPS
BT
ANY SHIP, REPEAT ANY SHIP, REPLY
IMMEDIATELY
URGENT
ANY SHIP, REPEAT ANY SHIP, REPLY
IMMEDIATELY
URGENT
BT
We immediately replied; received no answer in return. From that moment we continued to reply without cease, eliciting no response at any time other than a repetition of the original message. This had a peculiarity. Starting with that first time, it came, the message itself never varying, like the voice of some oracle of idiosyncratic, perhaps even purposeful habits chosen for a reason it did not deign to disclose, or perhaps even was unable to do so, perhaps even hopeful that we could figure out why, always on the hour and only on the hour. I was glad that in composing our reply, a captain’s caution at work, I had withheld two elements: our exact longitude-latitude position—the general area the receiver would know by our transmission; and our precise identification as a guided missile destroyer, contenting myself only with what seemed needful, an unnamed U.S. Navy vessel; strictly instructing Bainbridge, our communications officer, not to go further in these revelations unless otherwise ordered by myself. It was after all more than the sender had done: He had not even said who he was, notwithstanding that our replies continued to ask him this question in particular.
The Last Ship: A Novel Page 40
