by Peter Albano
“A talented man.”
“Yes. And then he was assigned to MacArthur’s staff in ’45 along with Mason Avery and Mark Allen.”
“Captain Mason Avery and Admiral Mark Allen,” she said.
“Right,” he said, eyes widening with surprise. “You know a lot about these old sea dogs.”
She laughed. “I should. After all, Captain Avery is an adviser to our top person, Admiral Stanton. I met him once at a briefing.”
“But Mark Allen?” he said, raising an eyebrow. Her laughter flowed like water over pebbles. “That’s easy. He’s my uncle. He told me about Trigger Ross. Do you have any conception of the number of sea stories that man knows?”
Ross smiled. “Not really. But, I can assure you of one thing.”
“What?”
“My father knows more.” They both laughed. The ensign tapped the table top. “I’d like to ask you something personal.”
“Fire away.”
“When we first met — in Commander Bell’s office. You seemed, ah, aloof. Like I didn’t exist — uninterested.” He continued drumming. “I hope I don’t sound conceited.”
A new seriousness hardened her voice. “Brent, do you have any conception of what a woman goes through, trying to function in a man’s world?”
The sudden earnestness made Brent uneasy. “I guess I really couldn’t.”
“I know this sounds trite, but a woman must excel and at the same time be on guard, too.”
“There’s resentment.”
“Resentment?” She chuckled, a bitter sound. “Sometimes it’s full-rigged belligerence. I know what to expect from a man at a party, theatre, dinner — but in front of a computer, in this.” She gestured at her uniform. “It’s a different ballgame.”
“So you were testing me.”
She pursed her lips. “Well, it’s caution. And, I guess, subconsciously, on the job, I test — yes.”
There was a long silence. “Pam, have I passed?”
“With flying colors, thus far.” Her smile broke the somber mood.
“Thus far?” he said, welcoming her smile with his own.
“Yes. There’s a battery of tests to be passed.” Her eyes found his.
He felt his heart accelerate, a tightening in his chest. He wondered about this woman who could change mood as quickly as a chameleon changes color. “When can I complete the tests?”
“You really want to?”
“I have more than a passing interest,” he said, thickly.
“Perhaps soon. I’m not Victorian, but it’s not wise to rush, is it.” Her hand closed over his.
“True. But on the other hand, physiologically, it’s not smart to delay, either, Pam.” Her laughter bubbled like fresh champagne. Their eyes locked as if tied by invisible string. But for only a moment. Quickly, she averted her eyes and withdrew her hand. He stifled a groan.
“When did you graduate?” she asked, again changing the mood.
“Six months ago,” he said, slowly. “What about you? I’ve done nothing but talk about my family. Tell me about yourself.”
“Oh, there isn’t much to tell.” Quickly, Pamela described her years growing up on Long Island, Vassar, and then the Navy where her mathematics major led to Naval Intelligence and the maddening yet fascinating world of cryptography and cryptanalysis. “And the Navy,” she concluded, “was so hard up for math majors, I skipped most basic training and — you won’t believe this … ”
“Try me.”
“I was fitted for uniforms, learned how to salute, and walked into a computer room without ever setting foot on a warship. I know very little about ships and weapons.”
“But you know computers, cryptography — that’s enough. Only a few people can handle it.”
“Thanks, Brent.”
“Any brothers or sisters, Pam?”
“No. I’m the only one. My father’s retired. He and Mother live in Vermont. Mother’s Mark Allen’s sister.”
“Oh, I see,” he said, nodding.
At that moment, their waitress brought their bouillabaisse: a single, large tureen containing a steaming mixture of crab, lobster, shrimp and clams. Pamela sighed in anticipation as the waitress ladled the rich mixture into individual bowls.
“A small improvement over the mess hall,” Brent said.
“I’ll go for Bill’s swill, anytime,” she answered, dipping her spoon.
*
“Marvelous,” Pamela said, touching her lips with the corner of her napkin. Nodding toward the empty tureen, she said, “I didn’t think we could eat all that.”
Before Ross could answer, he was interrupted by a loud, “Ahoy, Ross. Heave to, old mate, while Jeff Foulger comes alongside.”
“I’m not underway,” Brent said, rising. “Come alongside.” Smiling broadly, he held his hand out to a young, brown-haired ensign — a tall, slender man with sparkling hazel eyes. A drink was clutched in his hand as he walked unsteadily to the table. He was followed closely by another stocky, dark ensign who looked like he had been constructed of stones and timbers. He had no drink.
“Jeff! Jeff Foulger. Good to see you,” Brent said, grasping the newcomer’s hand.
“This is Mike Hughes,” Jeff said, waving his drink over his shoulder and spilling some. The men exchanged greetings and Brent introduced the pair to Pamela Ward.
“Join us,” Brent offered quickly.
“Thanks,” Foulger answered. “We’ve got a couple fresh mai tais waitin’ at the bar.” He gestured erratically to a doorway opening on a dark alcove. “Just wanted to say hello.” He weaved unsteadily. Hughes remained silent, staring at Pamela. Unlike his companion, he was steady.
“We just flew out from Chicago in Mike’s Cessna 441,” Foulger said. Smirking, he added, “We picked up a couple chicks in D.C. and dropped ’em in Denver — joined the ‘mile-high club’ over the Midwest.”
“Yeah,” Hughes said in a deep monotone.
“Cut in the FIS seventy and let the gyro fly her. What a party!” He belched.
“Nothin’ like it,” Jeff said with a faraway look. “All the way ’cross the Midwest.”
“Huh! Whaddaya mean. You didn’t make it to Detroit,” Foulger said derisively. “At least I made it to Wichita.”
“And you made a few other things,” Jeff said, giggling.
“Next time, at a thousand feet, over the smooth Pacific,” Mike said, eyes moving over Pamela like a hound savoring game. She returned the look with an unwavering stare.
Brent stirred restively. “What are you doing in Seattle?” he asked, quickly changing the subject.
“We’re celebrating, man — we’ve been assigned to the Big J,” Jeff said.
“Big J?” Pam said, suddenly coming to life.
“BB sixty-two — the battleship New Jersey,” Foulger said, beaming. “You’re looking at the two new assistant weapons officers. We’re flying to Pearl tomorrow.” He tried to expand his narrow chest, but only managed to lurch.
“Steady,” Brent said, extending a hand.
“Tomahawks, Harpoons, Vulcan, and big sixteen-inch bullets,” Foulger said, shrugging off the proffered help. “We can take on the whole Ivan navy by ourselves.”
“You like mature women, Ensign,” Hughes interrupted gutturally, black eyes glinting at Brent.
Brent felt a red hot snake coil in his chest, sending signals that tightened his arms and clubbed his fists in reaction to a man who exploited a situation, putting him at a disadvantage, challenging his instinct to attack while all the while cursing a civilization restraining him — a civilization commanding action from the brain, not the biceps. But civilization was eroding fast. “Belay that,” he snapped. “Your mouth’s too big.”
Hughes’ head jerked like a man who had been struck. But before he could speak, Jeff leaped in, hands raised. “Come on, guys,” he said. “Cool it. Don’t get your balls in an uproar, Brent. Mike’s just drunk — doesn’t know what he’s saying, man. It’s all cool now, real cool. Okay,
guys?”
Mike’s eyes never left Brent. He smirked. “Sure it’s okay. But it’d be a lot cooler,” he chuckled, “or warmer if we had women on the Big J. Make those long cruises a lot shorter, wouldn’t it, Ensign Ross?”
Before Brent could answer, he felt Pam’s hand on his sleeve as she said evenly, “Perhaps. And raise the IQ of the Weapons Division, too.”
Fixed on Brent, the black eyes glowered under massive black eyebrows. Hughes snarled, “You must be a desk jockey. All you shore duty commandos get all the puss — ”
Before the sentence could be completed, Brent’s fist lashed out cobra-like, catching the burly ensign in the mouth, sending spittle and blood flying. The man staggered backward, hand dabbing at his mouth, spitting blood. Quickly, he planted his feet, fists at his sides, balled. Brent moved toward him, jaw set, eyes narrow, neck cords bulging like steel rods. A deathly silence filled the small room as every patron stared at the two men.
“At ease,” Pamela shouted, rising. “Enough. I’m the ranking officer here. Knock it off, or I’ll call the SPs and have both of you thrown in the brig.”
Slowly, the two men turned until they faced the lieutenant. They knew she was right, and after seeing the determined cut of her jaw, they knew she would make good her threat.
There was a commotion as the owner, a middle-aged man wearing a chef’s hat and apron, entered the room, shouting, “What’s going on?”
“Nothing,” Pamela answered.
“Just a friendly discussion,” Jeff said, turning with sudden, new steadiness and grasping Hughes’ arm. Reluctantly, the hulking ensign turned and retreated. “It’s all cool,” Foulger said as he passed the chef.
But Brent knew it was not “All cool” and never would be. He hoped to meet Mike Hughes again.
TWO
2 December 1983
Over a billion years ago — during the Archeozoic Era — the north Pacific boiled and exploded, ripped by massive eruptions. Wrenched from the sea bottom by more than eighty volcanoes, the Aleutian Islands erupted from the Pacific in an eleven hundred mile arc, stretching from Alaska westward like a dagger pointed at Siberia’s Kamchatka peninsula. The point of the dagger, Attu, juts from the sea like a rounded, gray tombstone. For centuries, sailors making the two hundred mile pass between this fifteen-by-thirty-five-mile island and the Komandorskis have gazed in awe at one of the most forbidding landscapes on Earth: sheer volcanic peaks, sloping down three thousand feet to treeless, muskeg valleys, opening into the sea on surf-rimmed bays.
Only a few Aleut fishermen — descendants of survivors of eighteenth and nineteenth century Russian massacres — call this frozen, boulder-strewn wasteland home. Existing in half-buried sod houses called barabaros and wearing hooded jackets and trousers of sealskin, these hardy people subsist by fishing and seal hunting. But the seas — whipped by unpredictable winds and obscured by fog and snowflurries — are treacherous. Fishermen drown. Often, the United States Coast Guard’s Bering Sea Patrol must send helicopters racing to the island, searching for overdue fishermen.
At 1000 hours on the morning of 2 December, Lt. J.G. Solomon Levine piloted his Sikorski HH 52 Sea Guard over the southern tip of Attu. Thin, angular with brown eyes and a classically ridged Semitic nose, the officer leaned to his right and forward, cursing the instrument panel that blocked his view, the cyclic control stick, collective lever, and rudder pedals, commanding his hands and feet, and the heavy, padded, flotation suit, imprisoning his body. And the noise and vibration; even his helmet’s earphones were incapable of blocking the roar of the craft’s single General Electric T58 jet engine and the clack, clack of the three-bladed rotor.
Instinctively, he reached to a console to his left and flipped a switch to PVT. Then he grumbled into his helmet-mounted microphone, “Chopper jockeys are insane. What the fuck are we doing up here, flying this old vibrating bird at three hundred feet, looking for a bunch of screwed-up Aleut fishermen who probably got drunk and are sleeping it off in a cave with a bunch of sea lions.”
Levine’s co-pilot, Ensign Tyronne Jones, a husky, young black man, chuckled. “For once in your life, you’re right, Boss Man. I hear sea lions are better looking than their women.”
“Yeah. And sea lions take a bath.” The pilot’s hand moved to the console again, turning the switch to ICS. “You all right back there, Davies?”
The third member of the crew, flight mechanic Tim Davies, strapped to his jump seat by the craft’s sliding door which was locked in the usual open rescue position, cleared his throat before answering. “I’m okay, Lieutenant — except for one thing.”
“What?”
“My left ball just froze and fell off.”
“So! You’re an ounce lighter.” Again, the switch was turned to PVT. “What does the magic box say about bearing and range to the last position of those Aleuts?”
Jones scanned the small, red, back-lighted screen of a loran digital computer. “Two-seven-eight true, range thirty miles.”
“We’re crawling right up that vector’s ass.”
“Right on, Boss.”
“But we don’t know if those assholes had a radar reflector.”
Tyronne glanced at some notes on a pad, strapped to his knee. “Right again, Boss Man. You’re a genius today. We’ll probably eyeball this one all the way.”
“Shit!” Levine grumbled. “We may get lucky, though. Keep an eye on the scope.” Then he glanced at the island, slipping past just a few hundred feet below. “Looks just like a crypt,” he said matter-of-factly.
Jones nodded. “It should, Boss Man,” he said. “There are still hundreds of Jap skeletons down there, left over from the war.”
“I know. And I hear there’s an old Jap captain still hunting them — has a regular bunch of old Jap gravediggers,” Solomon said.
“Shit. Why? Doesn’t make sense. They should leave the stiffs alone. They died for the fuckin’ hole.”
Levine shrugged. “They burn the bones, put ’em in those white boxes and ship ’em home. Put ’em in a shrine, I hear. Go to heaven that way, I guess.”
The black stared downward. “You know, Sol, it’s a real piece of shit. Not worth your circumcised dick.”
A slight grin played with the corners of the pilot’s mouth. He enjoyed flying with this tough black. Lonely, isolated, and often frightened, the pair would tune out the third member of the crew and use the ultimate privacy of the cockpit for a continuous exchange of racial and religious insults. But it was only done in this cold, noisy compartment — never in front of others and usually on long missions when danger and frustration mounted.
“Hey, Whitey. Got something on the radar,” the co-pilot said, quickly. “This mother’s big — too big for a fishing boat.”
“Calm down, Brother. Don’t want to upchuck them chittlins an’ ’taters. Just give me a vector and none of that ‘too big’ crap. You know radar’s tricky.”
“Two-eight-zero — eighty miles.”
“Eighty miles. Shit. Only crazy Aleuts could be that far out. That’s half way to the Komandorskis — could even be Russian waters.” He glanced at his fuel gauges and fingered the throttle button. “Hang on to your wool, Blood. We’re going into overdrive.”
For thirty minutes the cockpit was nearly silent, a silence interrupted only by the pilot’s requests for courses and ranges. Both men were confused. The blip was moving far too fast for a fishing boat or even a merchant ship. And the lack of visibility was maddening. Sundered by the charging Sikorski, clouds and mist swirled angrily about the churning intruder, allowing only occasional glimpses of the gray sea.
Finally, the pilot cursed. “That blip must be a Russian cruiser.”
“Up here?”
“What else? We don’t have any in the Bering Sea. Can you think of any other explanation?” Levine asked.
“Nope.”
“Well, we might as well check it out. We came this far. Maybe they saw the Aleuts or picked ’em up.” He shrugged. “Who knows? Whe
n we make visual, try both emergency frequencies.”
“I’m hip, Boss,” the co-pilot said, staring intently ahead.
“Spot anything?”
‘‘Negative. It’d be easier to find your rabbi’s foreskin.” And then, suddenly, “Jesus Christ, man. A fuckin’ island.”
“Where? Where?”
“Two o’clock, range two miles.”
“Got it. It’s a carrier,” the pilot said, confused. “I didn’t know we had any carriers up here. The Russkies sure as hell don’t. Must be one of ours — I don’t get it.” He tapped his temple and then grasped the controls firmly. “I’ll do a three-sixty at one thousand and you see if you can raise him. Use bridge-to-bridge and FM sixteen. Maybe he saw the Aleuts.” He kicked the rudder pedal and moved the cyclic control to the right.
The co-pilot grunted, reached up to an overhead console, and threw two switches. Then he began to chant, “Unknown carrier … unknown carrier, this is Coast Guard Helicopter One-Four-Six-Five. How do you read? Over.” Over and over he repeated the message while the HH 52 made a complete orbit of the ship which was never clearly visible, slashing through banks of fog and mist. But both men heard nothing but static on their earphones.
“Damn! Why don’t they answer? Can you see her? What are her colors, Ty?”
“There’s too much soup. I can’t get a good look. But she doesn’t have the angled deck of a fleet carrier and she’s way too big for a chopper boat.”
‘‘Oh fuck ’em,” Levine said in exasperation. “According to Navy regs and Maritime Law, he’s supposed to answer. Let’s get his number and report him. I’m sick of these hotshot swabbies.”
“Hey, man. Stay cool. You know the regs about buzzin’.”
The lieutenant waved a hand in frustration and banked the craft, lining up on the carrier’s port side. He dropped the Sea Guard to one hundred feet. “We’ll buzz his port side and get his bow number.”
