Chapter 25
Frank Bellows and I landed at the Antonio B. Won International Airport also known as the Guam International Airport. I contacted Naval Base Guam and arranged for armed guards for our planes. Then Frank and I hitched a ride on a Navy van to take us to the recently-opened ship repair facility, named in typical Navy-acronym fashion PACDIM, for Pacific Dry-Dock and Integrated Maintenance. The facility, which opened in 2014, was acquired by the Navy to fulfill its mission of readiness. The Ford was expected within an hour.
As the Ford eased into its slip aided by four tugboats, a Navy band on the dock struck up “America the Beautiful,” always an inspirational sound for any American. But then I remembered the Ford was coming in for repairs because of a terrorist bombing. I tuned out the beautiful music.
Frank and I climbed the gangway and reported aboard. Harry was waiting on the quarterdeck. We hugged, not even trying to show decorum. Harry and I went to his office on the flag bridge.
“When I saw you coming in for a landing and all of a sudden your plane was obscured by the explosion, I thought I had lost you, honey. Nice piece of flying, lieutenant.”
“Are those tears I see streaming down your face, Harry?”
“Must be an allergy or something. Hey, babe, I thought I lost you.”
“And all I could think about was you and the explosions. How bad is it?”
“As you can see from here the aft flight deck is torn to shit. The initial repair estimate is two months, not bad given the amount of damage.”
“I hate to even ask this, but do you have a list of casualties?”
“Yeah, here it is. I have some really bad news, honey. Lieutenant Parker, our visitor from 1942 and your friend Sandy’s fiancé, has been killed.”
As Harry said that, I felt like I just plunged into a tank of ice water. I knew I had to make the worst phone call of my life. Sam Parker had no next of kin in 2018, so bringing the news to Sandy was my job.
“I want to get this over with, Harry. I’m calling Sandy now.”
“I don’t know if they hooked up the telephone line yet.”
“Yes, it’s hooked up. I arranged for that with the shore facility.”
“Why does it not surprise me that you’ve already covered the bases. I’ll give you some privacy, hon. I know you want to talk to Sandy alone.”
“No, please stay put, Harry. Just two days ago I got an email from her updating me on their wedding plans. This isn’t going to be easy. Please sit next to me and hold my hand.”
My phone conversation with Sandy took only five minutes, the longest five minutes of my life. Typical of Sandy, she ended the conversation by saying, “Thank God you and Admiral Harry are okay.”
“I think NavOps will want to see me at the Pentagon. Supervising the repair operation is Marty Brinkman’s job as captain of the Ford.”
“Yes, NavOps does want to see you, and the meeting will be held in the office of the Secretary of Defense. I called them and then made our flight arrangements. They also want Buster to come. The meeting is set for tomorrow at 1400 at the Pentagon.”
“I need to meet with the captains of the other ships in the group. They’re all anchored here in the harbor.”
“Done. This ship will be crawling with construction people soon, so I got us a conference room at the admin building next to the pier. I’ve alerted the captains to be there at 1300, two hours from now, unless you want a different time.”
“Meg, have I told you recently how amazing you are?”
“Hey, what’s an aide for?”
Chapter 26
“Secretary Jamison will see you now, folks.”
Meg, Buster, and I had been waiting for only two minutes. I was impressed with Jamison’s efficiency.
Defense Secretary Mike Jamison is a tall black man, about 6’4”. He’s well known for the force of his personality. He was President Blake’s first appointment when he took office. Mike Jamison served in the Senate for 10 years before taking this job. Before that he served eight years in the Navy, leaving with the rank of lieutenant commander. The press, both right and left-leaning, love the guy. He’s known for his straight talk, honesty, and sense of humor.
“Admiral Fenton, Lieutenant Fenton, Agent Atkins, please have a seat,” Jamison said. Behind him was a large picture window, which flashed annoying sunlight off a skylight next to it. The result was that we looked at a silhouette of the man, with no ability to see his facial expressions. This guy must be a mean poker player, I thought.
“I believe you folks have met Admiral Bob Munckton, Chief of Naval Operations, and General Brad Simone, Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff. Congratulations, Lieutenant Fenton. I hear that you’ve recently earned your wings. People tell me that you’re one hell of a Hornet pilot.”
“Admiral Harry is a good coach, Mr. Secretary.”
“The purpose of this meeting should be obvious—the relentless attacks on our ships, the most recent being the USS Gerald R. Ford. I’m going to ask Admiral Fenton and Agent Atkins, who I call Buster, to give us a rundown on the explosion on the Ford.”
“As of right now, Mr. Secretary, we know very little, only that three powerful bombs detonated on the rear flight deck,” I said. “Buster earns his name as ‘super spook,’ but even he doesn’t have much information. We do know that the bombing was intentional. The bombs were on rolling racks waiting to be attached to aircraft. We haven’t found any detonation devices, but that’s to be expected after such a large blast. I’ll let Buster fill us in with more details.”
“Admiral Fenton is correct that we haven’t uncovered much, but I feel confident that Chief Warrant Officer Ciano has the case under control. That guy deserves a medal and a promotion, if you don’t mind me saying. Two days ago, he arrested three sailors, two of whom were on career track, who were caught taking photos of sensitive areas of the ship. One of the men had emailed the photos, and Ciano’s IT people tracked the IP address of the recipient to a computer in Yemen. So, we knew that the Ford was the latest ship to see inside terror operatives at work. It seems to me…”
“Pardon me, Mr. Secretary,” his assistant said, “but President Blake is on the phone. He told me to put him on speaker at your meeting.”
“If you have a TV in your conference room, turn it on now,” President Blake said.
“Good afternoon, ladies and gentlemen, Fran Holloway for Fox News reporting on this suddenly erupting story. As I mentioned a few moments ago, the USS Dwight D. Eisenhower has exploded and sank at its pier at Naval Station Mayport, Florida. You heard me correctly. It not only exploded, it sank. Because the water next to the pier isn’t deep, the ship is sitting on the bottom, with water up to its flight deck. The situation is chaotic, and what I’m telling you may change as more reports come in. Here’s what we know. At 1:50 p.m. just 10 minutes ago, at least six huge explosions were heard coming from compartments below the ship’s waterline. Just yesterday, the Navy’s newest and largest carrier, the USS Gerald R. Ford, sustained serious damage to its flight deck when three bombs exploded. The Ford is now undergoing repairs at a ship overhaul facility on Guam. The Ford had been headed to the Sea of Japan to rendezvous with naval forces from South Korea and Japan. These shocking developments have our military on the highest level of alert. We’ll be following this story all day. Stay tuned to Fox News for the latest updates.”
“Folks,” President Blake said, “not to overstate the obvious, we’re at war, a live, shooting war. But so far, it’s an undeclared war for one reason—we don’t know who the enemy is. I trust that you good people will come up with some answers. I know that sounds like an impossible task, but we’re faced with the greatest threat since Pearl Harbor. Call me after your meeting, Mike.”
“I can’t think of a more dramatic backdrop to our meeting than what we just heard,” Jamison said. “Buster, please continue your report with an emphasis on what we can do now—that’s right now.”
“Everybody, and I mean everybody, is a suspec
t,” Buster said. “As an American who loves freedom, it makes me sick to my stomach to say that, but the recent events point to the way I’m about to suggest. Every sailor or soldier on every military installation is a potential terrorist, and I don’t just mean enlisted men, but officers as well, as we found out with the Sternberg incident where the captain himself detonated a bomb. Somehow, and I don’t have a fucking clue—pardon my language—but somehow this cancer of radicalism has infected our entire military. Operation Shadow Warrior, or OSW, is the name that we’ve given to the process we use to deal with these incidents and try to prevent the next one. Our enemy lurks in the shadows and strikes at us because we don’t know he’s there. So, here’s what we’ve got to do. As a military man myself, this idea makes me crazy, but I don’t see any other way. Anyone who wants to go anywhere on a ship or other military installation, must be accompanied by another person, an escort, if you will. Everybody will be required to wear a shortwave radio microphone on his or her uniform, just like a cop, so that they can communicate a suspicion immediately to the OOD or whoever else is in charge. So, if a guy says, ‘pardon me sir, but I need to go to the head,’ the officer will assign another person to go with him.”
“What about the impact on morale?” Secretary Jamison said. “If you need an escort to go take a leak, wouldn’t that start to grate on people’s nerves?”
“I’ve thought about that, Mr. Secretary. Look at it this way. The horrors that our military installations have been going through aren’t secret. Every soldier and sailor wants to prevent an attack from happening. The answer is that we need to be completely open about these procedures. I predict that this operation will soon become no more than a minor inconvenience, a pain in the butt. People will probably make jokes about it, and that’s fine. If every person has a shadow, the less the chance of a terror operative hitting the button.”
“Lieutenant Fenton,” Jamison said, “I would like you to speak from a woman’s perspective. I don’t think I’m being sexist when I say that women value their privacy more than men. How will our women shipmates see Buster’s plan?”
“Mr. Secretary, I think Buster’s nailed it. The key ingredient is that the ‘escorts,’ for lack of a better word, are chosen at random. It would completely creep me out if I had one person assigned to watch over me, but if the person in charge says, ‘you go with her,’ I don’t see a morale problem at all. This minor pain in the butt, as Buster puts it, beats the hell out of having a ship explode from under you.”
“Okay, we’re going to take a break,” Jamison said. “Lt. Fenton is right—Buster nailed it. We’re not going to sleep on it or form committees. During the break, I want Buster to compose the order that I want to announce this afternoon. We’ll call it ‘Operation Escort.’
“Mr. Secretary,” Buster said. “would you please assign someone to escort me to the men’s room so I can pee?”
Everybody cracked up, but the laughter seemed nervous.
***
EFFECTIVE IMMEDIATELY – OPERATION ESCORT
This directive is to be read and obeyed by all military personnel of the United States Armed Forces. Because of the rash of terrorist incidents on Navy ships in recent days, the Department of Defense hereby announces Operation Escort. Any time a member of our military needs to go to a different location for any reason, that person will be ‘escorted’ by a randomly assigned colleague. This will be no more than one person accompanying another person. The recent terrorist incidents happened because some terror operative set an explosive device without the knowledge of anyone else. The objective of this operation is to eliminate the possibility of a secretive action by a terrorist. This is a part of the ‘see something-say something’ directive. Therefore, all personnel will wear a shortwave radio transmitter on his or her uniform, so that a suspicious circumstance can be reported immediately to the officer in charge. This procedure may be a slight inconvenience, but far less inconvenient that suffering an explosion.
Michael Jamison
Secretary of Defense
“Buster, that’s perfect,” Jamison said.
“George,” he said to his assistant. “Take this to the communications office for dissemination to all military installations immediately.”
Wow, Jamison moves fast, I thought.
“Any predictions, observations, comments?” Jamison asked.
“The ACLU is going to go batshit,” Buster said.
Chapter 27
Meg and I returned to Guam to await the repairs to the Ford. Our exercises with the South Koreans and the Japanese Navy had been postponed, of course, until the Ford was seaworthy. Captain Brinkman gave me the official rundown of damage to the ship, which was a lot less than we originally thought. When you see part of a ship exploding before your eyes, your brain fills in your gaps of knowledge with bad news. I stood on the outside walkway overlooking the flight deck, happy to see the progress they had made in just a few days.
“Hey, handsome, why the faraway look in your eyes?”
“I was just thinking about Ray Spruance and the other people I met in 1942. Here we are in the beautiful Marianas, which would turn into a hell hole during the Battle of the Philippine Sea. One more time, Ray Spruance kicked enemy ass, sinking three carriers in what became known as the Marianas Turkey Shoot. It was an ugly time in history, Meg. The Japanese, who are now our good friends, were not such nice people during the Pacific War. There are hundreds of historical accounts of men, women, and children hurling themselves off cliffs rather than face torture at the hands of Japanese soldiers. Imagine that? People chose suicide over becoming Japanese prisoners. The Pacific theater soon became total war. Admiral Halsey, his anger on full display, had signs planted all over the islands that said: ‘Kill Japs, kill Japs, kill more Japs.’ The anger percolated up to the White House, when Roosevelt okayed a storm of napalm bombings that makes you sick. We dropped the fires of hell from the sky, shot it into caves with flame throwers, and used it in short aerial bombings. All that shit happened right here, in the pretty, peaceful Marianas Islands.”
“So here we are, Harry. Same shit, different enemy.”
“You know, hon, I really don’t like killing people, even though I’m apparently good at it. If I didn’t have you, my island of peace, I think I’d lose my marbles. We didn’t ask for this fight, but we sure as hell are in the middle of it. Maybe, after we retire, we should buy a B&B in some quiet countryside location. Just you and me, making people happy instead of killing them.”
Meg wrapped her arms around me and squeezed. She has a way of centering me when my mind goes in bad directions.
“I love you, lieutenant.”
“And I love you, baby. I hate to interrupt this wonderful moment, but you have a staff meeting in a half hour. We’d better prepare.”
***
“Good afternoon, everyone,” I said. “Before we discuss our repair status, I’ll bring you all up to date on our trip to the Defense Department. Right in the middle of the meeting, we heard the announcement that the USS Eisenhouer was bombed and sank at her berth in Mayport. President Blake called us with the news. The meeting addressed the attacks on American ships, including the Ford, and most recently, the Eisenhouer. The shit was hitting the fan as we spoke. It may not surprise you that our spy friend Buster over here came up with a plan to stop the relentless terror attacks. You all received the directive from Defense Secretary Jamison, which discussed Operation Escort. Buster wrote the directive for Jamison’s signature. At first glance it sounds crazy—nobody can go anywhere without being accompanied by a fellow crewmember, and that includes Captain Brinkman, me, and everybody else. The directive is simple, extremely simple. Don’t pick it apart, don’t analyze it, and don’t fight it. Every bombing of every ship that’s occurred in the past few weeks had one characteristic—nobody saw it coming. If anybody thinks they have a better plan than Buster’s, let me know. With this plan in effect, nobody will be able to plant a bomb or rig a device without the escort’s
knowledge. People will make jokes about it, and that’s fine. Laugh all you want, but just make sure nobody goes anywhere without an escort. Now, I’m asking Captain Marty to bring us up to date on our repairs. He tells me that we’re ahead of schedule, and we’ll put to sea in one week. NavOps is rescheduling our maneuvers with South Korea and Japan. Before Captain Marty gives us his update, we’ll have a short break because I need to visit the head. Marty, please assign me an escort.”
Chapter 28
Lieutenant Mark Thompson was standing watch as the officer of the deck of the USS Arleigh Burke, one of the two destroyers in Carrier Strike Group 14, along with LTJG Phil Goodwin, junior officer of the deck. They were “keeping station” 1,000 yards off the starboard side of the Ford’s stern.
“That’s one beautiful ship,” Thompson said, nodding toward the Ford.
“Speaking of beautiful, did you check out Admiral Fenton’s wife? She is one hot fox.”
“Hey, is that any way to talk about fellow officer?”
“Okay, she’s the most outrageously sexy babe I’ve seen in a long time. Do you think she’d mind if I saluted her? And I don’t mean with my hand.”
“Watch your instruments, wiseass. The captain wants us to stay exactly 1,000 yards from the Ford’s stern.”
“Hey.”
“Hey, what?”
“Hey, what the fuck? Where did the Ford go? The ship just disappeared.”
“Call the captain. I’m sounding general quarters.”
“General quarters, general quarters, all hands man your battle stations. This is not a drill. I repeat, this is not a drill.”
The jarring sound of the claxon—clang, clang, clang—ripped through the ship.
***
The Violent Sea Page 8
