The Quintessence of Quick (The Jack Mason Saga) (39 page)

Sometimes I can’t believe where I am today, compared to where I was when I made the “deal” with Master Sergeant Gordon to play ball for a couple of years for some stateside post around Baltimore. I truly didn’t know my ass from third base about what was going on around me, but somewhere along the line I started getting the message about what these commie bastards would like to make of the free world. Maybe Gordon actually had a pretty good idea of what I’d do, once the Army took hold inside me. Maybe he knew that I’d probably make Honor Man of my recruit platoon, and then there’d be no stopping me. Am I that big of a goddam ham, that starved for approval, that all the Army had to do was to keep putting a challenge in front of me and that, one way or another, I’d end up doing some goddam fool thing in the asshole of nowhere and getting decorated for it? Yes, goddammit, to all of the above. In
Laos, I was a shooter for my country; next time, there’s a good chance that I’ll be a killer for my country. There’s some hate down deep in my system that I’ve gotta burn out (get that goddam Principal Martin, Coach Whitehead, chicken-shit Preston Rogers and that lying, nigger-loving bitch out of my mind!), and maybe that’ll be what it takes to do it.  Hell, I’m startin’ to feel better already...

“Flight, CICO.” Chief Warrant Officer Rusty Parker’s grumpy
Alabama
baritone reverberated through the WC-121N’s twenty-odd headsets. “CICO,” pronounced “see-ko,” identified him as the duty Combat Information Center Officer.

“CICO, Flight,” acknowledged Lt. Commander Ray Browning in his own version of Dixiespeak.

“Sir, we’re now paintin’ four- repeat, four- surface contacts, relative bearing 320 to 055, range 155 to 180 miles. Looks like they’re all dead in the water.”

“Roger, Rusty; gimme a heading to the easternmost, and advise when we’re 10 miles out. Flight to crew, here we go again; all stations rig for riggin’.” He glanced over at Jack, who, like Rusty, was filling in on Browning’s Crew Five. With his typical self-deprecating grin he confessed, “I just can’t say ‘rig for riggin’ with a straight face.” Shifting his headset so that its leather-covered double arch found a fresh place to settle onto his gray-fringed pink scalp, he patiently awaited a new heading from CICO.

“Flight, CICO, come right to 332; my seat-of-the-pants ETA’s 1037, subject to Nav’s confirmation.”

“Flight, Nav,” Freddie Barstow’s dissonant crackle cut into the tail end of Parker’s transmission, “sounds Kosher to me, unless we pick up the forecast northwesterly wind shift ahead of time. Driftmeter just showed me zero, so that could be happening. Will advise.”

Low-level reconnaissance, or “ship rigging” in the jargon of Navy patrol squadrons, involves close visual inspection of shipping, flying at or below the height of a ship’s superstructure. It’s by no means a normal maneuver for a four-engine, near-100-ton aircraft with a couple of dozen souls on board. In the case at hand, normalcy had long since been thrown out the window. Stormron THREE was one of the many units temporarily attached to Atlantic Fleet Task Force 84. The squadron’s mission was identical to that of the much smaller Lockheed P2V’s it was ordered to supplement; locate and track ships suspected of carrying nuclear missiles and other war matériel into Castro’s Cuba.

A fast-growing volume of intelligence, both from airborne reconnaissance and sources on the ground in
Cuba, grew more negative by the hour. It indicated that the
Soviet Union
was providing massive military assistance, both in hardware and manpower, to its new
Caribbean
ally. This information flow was climaxed by high-altitude U-2 overflights that confirmed the installation of launching sites for intermediate range ballistic missiles and the presence in
Cuba
of at least 40,000 Soviet troops. After a series of unproductive diplomatic exchanges, President Kennedy addressed the nation on October 22nd. Preparing his fellow Americans for what could be dire consequences, he said that these missiles could reach targets deep inside the
United States. He stated that war was a distinct possibility if the Soviets did not remove them.

Shortly after that, the decision was made to place
Cuba
under “quarantine.” No ships determined to be carrying war matériel would be allowed inside a 500-mile circle, its radius anchored on
Havana. Ship-rigging provided current information on ships’ identity, type, deck cargo, course and speed. It also provided an up-close reminder to the ships, and upward through their chain of command, of the
United States’ intent to enforce the decision, arrived at just the day before, to continue ship-rigging operations. Other aspects of the quarantine were currently suspended, pending the outcome of negotiations at the United Nations.

“Flight, CICO.”

“Go.”

“The easternmost ship’s now 10 miles out, on a relative bearing 010.”

“Roger. I think we’ll approach him out of the East on the first pass, Rusty. We’ll come right to 060 to give us some interval; advise when we’re abeam his position.”

“Wilco.”

“Oh, and ask Mr. Christie to come forward to see if we can get an ID on the ship as we close on it.”

“Roger.”

LTJG William Christie, temporarily attached to the squadron from his regular billet at the Naval Station, hurried forward, holding 7X35 binoculars to his chest with one hand as he gripped a bulging briefcase with the other. “Reporting as ordered, sir,” he said with a wink in Jack’s direction. “I didn’t realize we’d be coming up on Point Alpha this quickly.”

“We’ll be there before you know it, Billy,” Browning said with a smile. “Think you might have some hot dope on these ships we’re going to buzz?”

“Eight to five I have, sir,” Christie said, returning the grin as he plugged his headset into the jump seat’s phone jack. “CINCLANT teletyped quite a bit of stuff over last night. Looks like we’re taking the Sovs’ deal, which has their inbound ships holding short of the quarantine line.”

“Hm,” Browning grunted. “Well, this one we’re coming up on looks to be doing just that. CICO, Flight,” he said into the boom mike at the corner of his mouth.

“Flight, CICO. You’re reading my mind, boss. Come left to 272.”

“272, Roger. Got him in sight. Flight to crew; stand by for ship-rigging; fasten seatbelts. “Eddie,” he said to the flight engineer, “let’s ease on down to 200 feet. Jack, call the altitude as we pass through 500. Let’s see if we can pick this rascal’s name off the hull on the first pass.”

Pushing the big ship’s nose gently over, Browning let its airspeed build up to 225 as they approached the ship, its low silhouette suggesting its role as a tanker, rapidly filled the windshield. It was port-side-to and motionless on the still and shiny
Caribbean. Letting the altitude drop to 150 feet, Browning pulled up to clear the ship’s after superstructure at the mission-prescribed distance of 300 feet. Its name, Грозный, appeared clearly on the bow. “Allen, did you get that?”

Photographer’s Mate Second Class Clarence Allen was seated before the aircraft’s two-foot diameter circular windows, stacked one above the other at the Aerographer’s station, portside and aft of the
Combat
Information
Center. The windows’ bowed-out contour, designed to allow the Aerography Officer and his assistants an optimum view of the waves when penetrating hurricanes, was just as good for aerial photography. He began shooting the ship’s bow as soon as he had it in sight through the upper window, and was able to get three exposures with his Polaroid-backed 4x5 Speed Graphic camera. “Yes sir, I got it,” he replied, allowing himself a thin smile of satisfaction.

“Well done, Shooter,” Christie responded. “Sit tight and stand by to get the other side.” Turning to the aircraft commander, he asked, “Mr. Browning, can you take us down the ship’s starboard side? A good shot of those monster silver tubes on her deck’ll make ’em sit up and take notice back at command.”

“That’s what we’re out here for, son. Jack, how about doing the honors?”

“I’ve got it, sir,” Jack responded, smiling. “BMEP 120, please, Chief.” Jack brought the aircraft’s nose up as he set it in a 30-degree angle of bank, which he held steady as he waited for the Soviet ship’s stern to come into view. As it did, he called for reduced power, slowing the aircraft down as its altitude dropped to 150 feet. Coming left as they approached the ship, then coming right to run parallel to its hull, he glanced quickly over at Christie, saying, “How’s that?”

“Just right,” exclaimed the Intelligence Officer. “Look at the size of those tubes! If those aren’t SS-4’s, I’ll eat my bridge cap. You getting them, Allen?”

“Affirmative, sir; yes indeed!”

“Attaboy,” Christie said as he shuffled paper inside his briefcase. Looking at Ray Browning, he said, “Sir, may I have Allen bring his shots up here, so we can compare the ship’s name with my list of English translations?”

“Sure, go ahead. Take us due south about 5 miles, Jack, and let’s orbit there while we ID the ship and get a message out.”

“Allen, this is Mr. Christie. Come on up and let’s have a look at your work, young man.”

Jack and his second post-shower
Corona
had just gotten settled on the abbreviated backyard behind his quarters when he sensed Nick’s presence. “Some days in the Cold War are rougher than others, hm?” Dressed in tennis togs, he leaned against the yard’s lone palm tree, the base’s lights spreading out behind him, stretching west to the little town of Ceiba and beyond.

“Yup, Bobby Riggs, you could say that,” Jack replied, “or you could say that there are a whole lot of people in this world doing their absolute best to scare the piss out of each other, and doing a jam-up fucking good job of it, too. Looking at somebody else’s nuclear missile up close ain’t that soothing an experience, and we saw quite a few today, with a few of the other guy’s subs thrown in.”

“An altogether sobering experience, no doubt about it,” Nick mused, “and I’m sure you’ll be glad to know that today was your last ship-rigging hop.”

“Yeah, I noticed that there was nothing scheduled for tomorrow, but how the hell do we know the Reds are really gonna fold and go away? You know politicians.”

“The thing that I know best about politicians is that they want to stay in office, and that means staying alive. They’ll negotiate this thing to a standstill, provided some hotshot Colonel or equivalent doesn’t take it on himself to let one go just for the hell of it. Each side’s got a few of that type.”

“Christie, this intelligence type from the Station that flew with us today, said they really have a shitload of stuff already on the island. Do you really believe that they’ll actually load all of it up and take it back to the
USSR? And how the hell long will that take, anyway?”

“It’s already underway; 60 missiles, 134 nuclear warheads and some 30,000 combat troops. Kennedy pretty much held Khrushchev’s feet to the fire, although he did agree to pull some obsolescent NATO missiles out of
Turkey. Oh, and he did say that the
US
won’t be invading
Cuba-
ever.”

“Hm. Sort of like the Monroe Doctrine in reverse. Of course, once everybody has nukes, it’s an entirely different ball game. Christie told me something else in the
Cuba
department that was pretty fascinating. Turns out he’s from
Georgia, too; Bainbridge. Says his folks got done out of a fair-sized piece of property on the
Isle of Pines. The Castroites call it the Isle of Youth now. Apparently, people from the Southern states bought up the majority of the island after the War Between the States, with the idea of escaping Reconstruction and starting farms that would supply produce to the mainland. The treaty- the Hay-Quesada Treaty- guaranteed possession of Guan-tánamo to the
US
in exchange for its ceding of all claims of sovereignty to the
Isle of Pines.”

“The treaty took 21 years to ratify,” Nick said. “A couple of your relatives were down there, too.”

“You’re kidding. Who?”

“Couple of offshoots of the Watkins clan; an in-law and, oh, maybe a great, great uncle or something like that. You could check.”

“I will, believe me. Bill- Christie- has been down there; on the island, that is, sometime after World War II. Way after his folks had left, of course. Said it reminded him of a bunch of small Georgia towns from that time period- early 1900s, I mean- that had been picked up and dropped there by magic. His parents hired a guide who took them down to some caves with inscriptions that the guide said were thousands of years old, relics of what he called ‘the time of Atlantis.’ He called it ‘Antilia,’ but Bill said that there was no question of what he was talking about.”

“Might be a nice place to retire, if the Cubans ever learn how to run a country,” Nick said.

“And if nobody succeeds in blowing it up.”

“Trust me, you’re safe on that score. Maybe I’ll take a look in my spare time; seems as though Atlantis was doing business somewhere between 9-10,000 B.C. Quite a stretch, even for me. So many civilizations, so little time. Happy birthday, by the way.”

Jack glanced at his watch. “Thanks. I’ll be 28 in two hours. Feels funny to think that I might not have made it.”

Pushing off the tree, Nick bent his knees and burlesqued a sweeping backhand. “You’ll make it, kid, and a whole lot more. Sleep well.” In a new maneuver, he back-flipped off the cliff behind the quarters, and was gone.