by Tom Clancy
“I, uh, I have lunch ready.” He paused awkwardly. This wasn’t a time for good manners or considered words. “I don’t know what I’m supposed to say.”
“That’s okay.” Sarah smiled her benign doctor’s smile, the sort that told him that everything was all right, even though it wasn’t, really. “But we need to talk. This is Sandy O’Toole, by the way. Sandy’s a nurse, and she’s more responsible for your daughter’s recovery than I am.”
“Hi,” Sandy said, and handshakes were exchanged all around.
“Doris still needs a lot of help, Mr. Brown,” Dr. Rosen said. “She’s been through a really terrible time. Can we talk a little bit?”
“Yes, ma’ am. Please, sit down. Can I get you anything?” he asked urgently.
“I’ve set your daughter up with a doctor at Pitt. Her name’s Michelle Bryant. She’s a psychiatrist—”
“You mean Doris is . . . sick?”
Sarah shook her head. “No, not really. But she’s been through a very bad time, and good medical attention will help her recover a lot faster. Do you understand?”
“Doc, I will do anything you tell me, okay? I’ve got all the medical insurance I need through the company.”
“Don’t worry about that. Michelle will handle this as a matter of professional courtesy. You have to go there with Doris. Now, it is very important that you understand, she’s been through a really horrible experience. Terrible things. She’s going to get better—she’s going to recover fully, but you have to do your part. Michelle can explain all that better than I can. What I’m telling you, Mr. Brown, is this: no matter what awful things you learn, please—”
“Doc,” he interrupted softly, “that’s my little girl. She’s all I have, and I’m not going to . . . foul up and lose her again. I’d rather die.”
“Mr. Brown, that is exactly what we needed to hear.”
Kelly awoke at one in the morning, local time. The big slug of whiskey he’d downed along the way had blessedly not resulted in a hangover. In fact, he felt unusually rested. The gentle rocking of the ship had soothed his body during the day/night, and lying in the darkness of his officers’ accommodations he heard the gentle creaks of steel compressing and expanding as USS Ogden turned to port. He made his way to the shower, using cold water to wake himself up. In ten minutes he was dressed and presentable. It was time to explore the ship.
Warships never sleep. Though most work details were synchronized to daylight hours, the unbending watch cycle of the Navy meant that men were always moving about. No less than a hundred of the ship’s crew were always at their duty stations, and many others were circulating about the dimly lit passageways on their way to minor maintenance tasks. Others were lounging in the mess spaces, catching up on reading or letter-writing.
He was dressed in striped fatigues. There was a name tag that said Clark, but no badges of rank. In the eyes of the crew that made “Mr. Clark” a civilian, and already they were whispering that he was a CIA guy—to the natural accompaniment of James Bond jokes that evaporated on the sight of him. The sailors stood aside in the passageways as he wandered around, greeting him with respectful nods that he acknowledged, bemused to have officer status. Though only the Captain and Executive Officer knew what this mission was all about, the sailors weren’t dumb. You didn’t send a ship all the way from ‘Dago just to support a short platoon of Marines unless there was one hell of a good reason, and the bad-ass bunch that had come aboard looked like the sort to make John Wayne take a respectful step back.
Kelly found the flight deck. Three sailors were walking there, too. Connie was still on the horizon, still operating aircraft whose strobes blinked away against the stars. In a few minutes his eyes adapted to the darkness. There were destroyers present, a few thousand yards out. Aloft on Ogden, radar antennas turned to the hum of electric motors, but the dominating sound was the continuous broomlike swish of steel hull parting water.
“Jesus, it’s pretty,” he said, mainly to himself.
Kelly headed back into the superstructure and wandered forward and upwards until he found the Combat Information Center. Captain Franks was there, sleepless, as many captains tended to be.
“Feeling better?” the CO asked.
“Yes, sir.” Kelly looked down at the plot, counting the ships in this formation, designated TF-77.1. Lots of radars were up and running, because North Vietnam had an air force and might someday try to do something really dumb.
“Which one’s the AGI?”
“This is our Russian friend.” Franks tapped the main display. “Doing the same thing we are. The Elint guys we have embarked are having a fine old time,” the Captain went on. “Normally they go out on little ships. We’re like the Queen Mary for them.”
“Pretty big,” Kelly agreed. “Seems real empty, too.”
“Yep. Well, no scuffles to worry about, ‘tween my kids and the Marine kids, I mean. You need to look at some charts? I have the whole package under lock in my cabin.”
“Sounds like a good idea, Cap’n. Maybe some coffee, too?”
Franks’s at-sea cabin was comfortable enough. A steward brought coffee and breakfast. Kelly unfolded the chart, again examining the river he’d be taking up.
“Nice and deep,” Franks observed.
“As far as I need it to be,” Kelly agreed, munching on some toast. “The objective’s right here.”
“Better you than me, my friend.” Franks pulled a pair of dividers out of his pocket and walked off the distance.
“How long you been in this business?”
“Gator navy?” Franks laughed. “Well, they kicked my ass out of Annapolis in two and a half years. I wanted destroyers, so they gave me a first-flight LST. XO as a jaygee, would you believe? First landing was Pelileu. I had my own command for Okinawa. Then Inchon, Wonsan, Lebanon. I’ve scraped off a lot of paint on a lot of beaches. You think . . . ?” he asked, looking up.
“We’re not here to fail, Captain.” Kelly had every twist of the river committed to memory, yet he continued to look at the chart, an exact copy of the one he’d studied at Quantico, looking for something new, finding nothing. He continued to stare at it anyway.
“You’re going in alone? Long swim, Mr. Clark,” Franks observed.
“I’ll have some help, and I don’t have to swim back, do I?”
“I suppose not. Sure will be nice to get those guys out.”
“Yes, sir.”
27
Insertion
Phase One of Operation BOXWOOD GREEN began just before dawn. The carrier USS Constellation reversed her southerly course at the transmission of a single code word. Two cruisers and six destroyers matched her turn to port, and the handles on nine different sets of engine-room enunciators were pushed down to the FULL setting. All of the various ships’ boilers were fully on line already, and as the warships heeled to starboard, they also started accelerating. The maneuver caught the Russian AGI crew by surprise. They’d expected Connie to turn the other way, into the wind to commence flight operations, but unknown to them the carrier was standing down this morning and racing northeast. The intelligence-gathering trawler also altered course, increasing power on her own in the vain hope of soon catching up with the carrier task force. That left Ogden with two Adams-class missile-destroyer escorts, a sensible precaution after what had so recently happened to USS Pueblo off the Korean coast.
Captain Franks watched the Russian ship disappear an hour later. Two more hours passed, just to be sure. At eight that morning a pair of AH-1 Huey Cobras completed their lonely overwater flight from the Marine air base at Danang, landing on Ogden’s ample flight deck. The Russians might have wondered about the presence of two attack helicopters on the ship which, their intelligence reports confidently told them, was on an electronic-intelligence mission not unlike their own. Maintenance men already aboard immediately wheeled the “snakes” to a sheltered spot and began a complete maintenance check which would verify the condition of every component. Members
of Ogden’s crew lit up their own machine shop, and skilled chief machinist’s mates offered everything they had to the new arrivals. They were still not briefed on the mission, but it was clear now that something most unusual indeed was under way. The time for questioning was over. Whatever the hell it was, every resource of their ship was made available even before officers troubled themselves to relay that order to their various divisions. Cobra gunships meant action, and every man aboard knew they were a hell of a lot closer to North Vietnam than South. Speculation was running wild, but not that wild. They had a spook team aboard, then Marines, now gunships, and more helicopters would land this afternoon. The Navy medical corpsmen aboard were told to open up the ship’s hospital spaces for new arrivals.
“We’re going to raid the fuckers,” a bosun’s mate third observed to his chief.
“Don’t spread that one around,” the twenty-eight-year veteran growled back.
“Who the fuck am I gonna tell, Boats? Hey, man, I’m for it, okay?”
What is my Navy coming to? the veteran of Leyte Gulf asked himself.
“You, you, you,” the junior man called, pointing to some new seamen. “Let’s do a FOD walkdown.” That started a detailed examination of the flight deck, searching for any object that might get sucked into an engine intake. He turned back to the bosun. “With your permission, Boats.”
“Carry on.” College boys, the senior chief thought, avoiding the draft.
“And if I see anybody smoking out here, I’ll tear him a new asshole!” the salty third-class told the new kids.
But the real action was in officers’ country.
“A lot of routine stuff,” the intelligence officer told his visitors.
“We’ve been working on their phone systems lately,” Podulski explained. “It makes them use radios more.”
“Clever,” Kelly noted. “Traffic from the objective?”
“Some, and one last night was in Russian.”
“That’s the indicator we want!” the Admiral said at once. There was only one reason for a Russian to be at SENDER GREEN. “I hope we get that son of a bitch!”
“Sir,” Albie promised with a smile, “if he’s there, he’s got.”
Demeanors had changed again. Rested now, and close to the objective, thoughts turned away from abstract dread and back into focus on the hard facts of the matter. Confidence had returned—leavened with caution and concern, but they had trained for this. They were now thinking of the things that would go right.
The latest set of photos had come aboard, taken by an RA-5 Vigilante that had screamed low over no less than three SAM sites to cover its interest in a minor and secret place. Kelly lifted the blowups.
“Still people in the towers.”
“Guarding something,” Albie agreed.
“No changes I see,” Kelly went on. “Only one car. No trucks . . . nothing much in the immediate area. Gentlemen, it looks pretty normal to me.”
“Connie will hold position forty miles off seaward. The medics cross-deck today. The command team arrives tomorrow, and the next day—” Franks looked across the table.
“I go swimming,” Kelly said.
The film cassette sat, undeveloped, in a safe in the office of a section chief of the KGB’s Washington Station, in turn part of the Soviet Embassy, just a few blocks up 16th Street from the White House. Once the palatial home of George Mortimer Pullman—it had been purchased by the government of Nikolay II-it contained both the second-oldest elevator and the largest espionage operation in the city. The volume of material generated by over a hundred trained field officers meant that not all the information that came in through the door was processed locally, and Captain Yegorov was sufficiently junior that his section chief didn’t deem his information worthy of inspection. The cassette finally went into a small manila envelope which was sealed with wax, then found its way into the awkward canvas bag of a diplomatic courier who boarded a flight to Paris, flying first class courtesy of Air France. At Orly, eight hours later, the courier walked to catch an Aeroflot jet to Moscow, which developed into three and a half hours of pleasant conversation with a KGB security officer who was his official escort for this part of the journey. In addition to his official duties, the courier did quite well for himself by purchasing various consumer goods on his regular trips west. The current item of choice was pantyhose, two pairs of which went to the KGB escort.
Upon arriving in Moscow and walking past customs control, the waiting car took him into the city, where the first stop was not the Foreign Ministry, but KGB Headquarters at #2 Dzerzhinskiy Square. More than half the contents of the diplomatic pouch were handed over there, which included most of the flat pantyhose packages. Two more hours allowed the courier to find his family flat, a bottle of vodka, and some needed sleep.
The cassette landed on the desk of a KGB major. The identification chit told him which of his field force had originated it, and the desk officer filled out a form of his own, then called a subordinate to convey it to the photo lab for development. The lab, while large, was also quite busy today, and he’d have to wait a day, perhaps two, his lieutenant told him on returning. The Major nodded. Yegorov was a new though promising field officer, and was starting to develop an agent with interesting legislative connections, but it was expected that it would be a while before CASSIUS turned over anything of great importance.
Raymond Brown left the University of Pittsburgh Medical School struggling not to quiver with anger after their first visit to Dr. Bryant. It had actually gone quite well. Doris had explained many of the events of the preceding three years with a forthright if brittle voice, and throughout he’d held her hand to lend support, both physical and moral. Raymond Brown actually blamed himself for everything that had happened to his daughter. If only he’d controlled his temper that Friday night so long before—but he hadn’t. It was done. He couldn’t change things. He’d been a different person then. Now he was older and wiser, and so he controlled his rage on the walk to the car. This process was about the future, not the past. The psychiatrist had been very clear about that. He was determined to follow her guidance on everything.
Father and daughter had dinner at a quiet family restaurant—he’ d never learned to cook well—and talked about the neighborhood, which of Doris’s childhood friends were doing what, in a gentle exercise at catching up on things. Raymond kept his voice low, telling himself to smile a lot and let Doris do most of the talking. Every so often her voice would slow, and the hurt look would reappear. That was his cue to change the subject, to say something nice about her appearance, maybe relate a story from the shop. Most of all he had to be strong and steady for her. Over the ninety minutes of their first session with the doctor, he’d learned that the things he’d feared for three years had indeed come to pass, and somehow he knew that other things as yet unspoken were even worse. He would have to tap on undiscovered resources to keep his anger in, but his little girl needed him to be a—a rock, he told himself. A great big rock that she could hold on to, as solid as the hills on which his city was built. She needed other things, too. She needed to rediscover God. The doctor had agreed with him about it, and Ray Brown was going to take care of it, with the help of his pastor, he promised himself, staring into his little girl’s eyes.
It was good to be back at work. Sandy was running her floor again, her two-week absence written off by Sam Rosen as a special-duty assignment, which his status as a department chairman guaranteed would pass without question. The post-op patients were the usual collection of major and minor cases. Sandy’s team organized and managed their care. Two of her fellow nurses asked a few questions about her absence. She answered merely by saying she’d done a special research project for Dr. Rosen, and that was enough, especially with a full and busy patient load. The other members of the nursing team saw that she was somewhat distracted. There was a distant look in her eyes from time to time, her thoughts elsewhere, dwelling on something. They didn’t know what. Perhaps a man, they all h
oped, glad to have the team leader back. Sandy was better at handling the surgeons than anyone else on the service, and with Professor Rosen backing her up, it made for a comfortable routine.
“So, you replace Billy and Rick yet?” Morello asked.
“That’ll take a while, Eddie,” Henry replied. “This is going to mess up our deliveries.”
“Aw, crap! You got that too complicated anyway.”
“Back off, Eddie,” Tony Piaggi said. “Henry has a good routine set up. It’s safe and it works—”
“And it’s too complicated. Who’s gonna take care of Philadelphia now?” Morello demanded.
“We’re working on that,” Tony answered.
“All you’re doing is dropping the stuff off and collecting the money, for Crissake! They’re not going to rip anybody off, we’re dealing with business people, remember?” Not street niggers, he had the good sense not to add. That part of the message got across anyway. No offense, Henry.
Piaggi refilled the wineglasses. It was a gesture Morello found both patronizing and irritating.
“Look,” Morello said, leaning forward. “I helped set up this deal, remember? You might not even be starting with Philly yet if it wasn’t for me.”
“What are you saying, Eddie?”
“I’ll make your damn delivery while Henry gets his shit back together. How hard is it? Shit, you got broads doing it for you!” Show a little panache, Morello thought, show them I have what it takes. Hell, at least he’d show the guys in Philly, and maybe they could do for him what Tony wouldn’t do. Yeah.
“Sure you want to take the chance, Eddie?” Henry asked with an inward smile. This wop was so easy to predict.
“Fuck, yeah.”
“Okay,” Tony said with a display of being impressed. “You make the call and set it up.” Henry was right, Piaggi told himself. It had been Eddie all along, making his own move. How foolish. How easily dealt with.
