Red Storm Rising Part 59

Dinner was excellent, though the Americans' judgment was somewhat affected by the liquid refreshments. O'Malley listened closely as his captain described the loss of Pharris, the tactics employed by the Russians, and how he had failed to counter them properly. It was like listening to a man relate the death of his child.

"Under the circ.u.mstances, hard to see what you could have done differently," Doug Perrin sympathized. "Victor is a capable opponent, and he must have timed your coming off the sprint very carefully."

Morris shook his head. "No, we came off sprint well away from him, and that blew his solution right out the window. If I'd done things better, those men wouldn't be dead. I was the captain. It was my fault."

Perrin said, "I've been there in the submarine, you know. He has the advantage because he's already been tracking you." He flashed O'Malley a look.

Dinner ended at eight. The escort commanders would meet the following afternoon, and the convoy would sail at sundown. O'Malley and Morris left together, but the pilot stopped at the brow.

"Forgot my hat. I'll be back in a minute." He hurried back to the wardroom. Captain Perrin was still there.

"Doug, I need an opinion."

"He shouldn't go back out in his current state. Sorry, Jerry, but that's how I see things."

"You're right. There's one thing I can try." O'Malley made a small purchase and rejoined Morris two minutes later.

"Captain, any particular reason you have to head right back to the s.h.i.+p?" he asked quietly. "Something I need to talk about and I don't want to do it aboard. It's a personal thing. Okay?" The pilot looked very embarra.s.sed.

"How about we take a little walk?" Morris agreed. The two officers walked east. O'Malley looked up and down the street, and found a waterfront bar with sailors going in and out. He steered Morris into it and they found a booth in the back.

"Two gla.s.ses," O'Malley told the barmaid. He unzipped the leg pocket of his flight suit and withdrew a bottle of Black Bush Irish whiskey.

"You want to drink here, you buy it here." O'Malley handed her two twenty-dollar bills.

"Two gla.s.ses and ice." His voice did not brook argument. "And leave us alone." Service was quick.

"I checked my logbook this afternoon," O'Malley said after tossing off half his first drink. "Four thousand three hundred sixty hours of stick time. Counting last night, three hundred eleven hours of combat time."

"Vietnam. You said you were there." Morris sipped at his own.

"Last day, last tour. Search-and-rescue mission for an A-7 pilot shot down twenty miles south of Haiphong." He had never even told his wife this story. "Saw a flash, made the mistake of ignoring it. Thought it was a reflection off a window or a stream or something. Kept going. Turned out it was probably a reflection of a gunsight, maybe a pair of binoculars. One minute later some hundred-millimeter flak goes off around us. Helo just comes apart. I get her down, we're on fire. Look left-copilot's torn apart, his brains are in my lap. My crew chief, a third-cla.s.s named Ricky, he's in the back. I look. Both his legs are torn off. I think he was still alive then, but there wasn't a d.a.m.ned thing I could do about it-couldn't even get to him the way things were-and there's three people heading toward us. I just ran away. Maybe they didn't see me. Maybe they didn't care-h.e.l.l, I don't know. Another helo found me twelve hours later." He poured himself another drink and topped off the one for Morris. "Don't make me drink alone."

"I've had enough."

"No, you haven't. And neither have I. It took me a year to get over that. You don't have a year. All you got's tonight. You gotta talk about it, Captain. I know. Think it's bad now? It gets worse."

He took another pull on the drink. At least it was good stuff, O'Malley told himself. He watched Morris sit there for five minutes, sipping at his drink and wondering if he should just go back to the s.h.i.+p. The proud captain. Like all captains, condemned to live alone, and this one was lonelier than most. He's afraid I'm right, O'Malley thought. He's afraid it will get worse. You poor b.a.s.t.a.r.d. If you only knew.

"Run through it," the pilot said quietly. "a.n.a.lyze it one step at a time."

"You already did that for me."

"I have a big mouth. Has to be for my feet to fit in it. You do it in your sleep, Ed. Might as well do it when you're awake."

And, slowly, he did. O'Malley coached him through the sequence. Weather conditions, s.h.i.+p's course and speed. What sensors were operating. In an hour they were three quarters of the way down the bottle. Finally they got to the torpedoes. Morris's voice started to crack.

"There just wasn't anything else I could do! The G.o.dd.a.m.ned thing just came in. We only had one nixie out, and the first fish blew that the h.e.l.l away. I tried to maneuver the s.h.i.+p, but-"

"But you were up against a homing torpedo. You can't outrun 'em and you can't outturn 'em."

"I'm not supposed to let-"

"Oh, horses.h.i.+t!" The pilot refilled the gla.s.ses. "You think you're the first guy ever lost a 'can? Didn't you ever play ball, Ed? h.e.l.l, there's two sides, and both of 'em play to win. You expect those Russian sub skippers are just gonna sit there and say, 'Kill me, kill me'? You must be dumber 'n I thought."

"My men-"

"Some of them are dead, most of them aren't. I'm sorry some're dead. I'm sorry Ricky died. Kid wasn't even nineteen yet. But I didn't kill him, and you didn't kill your men. You saved your s.h.i.+p. You brought her back with most of the crew."

Morris drained his gla.s.s with one long pull. Jerry refilled it, not bothering with ice.

"It's my responsibility. Look, when I got back to Norfolk, I visited-I mean, I had to visit their families. I'm the captain. I gotta-there was this little girl, and . . . Jesus, O'Malley, what the h.e.l.l do you say?" Morris demanded. He was sobbing, near tears, Jerry saw. Good.

"They don't put that in the book," O'Malley agreed. You think they would have learned by now.

"Pretty little girl. What do you tell the kids?" The tears started. It had taken nearly two hours.

"You tell the little girl that her daddy was a good man and he did his best, and you did your best, 'cause that's all we can do, Ed. You did everything right, but sometimes it just doesn't matter." It wasn't the first time O'Malley had had men cry on his shoulder. He remembered doing it himself. What a miserable life this can be, he thought, that it can bring good men to this.

Morris recovered a few minutes later, and by the time they finished the bottle both men were as drunk as either ever got. O'Malley helped his captain up and walked him to the door.

"What's the matter, Navy, can't take it?" He was a merchant seaman standing alone at the bar. It was the wrong thing to say.

It was hard to tell from the baggy flight suit that O'Malley was a man of considerable strength. His left arm was wrapped around Morris. His right hand grabbed the other man by the throat and dragged him away from the bar.

"You got anything else to say about my friend, d.i.c.kweed?" O'Malley tightened his grip.

The reply came in a whisper. "All I meant was he has trouble with his liquor."

The pilot released him. "Good night."

Maneuvering the captain back to the s.h.i.+p was difficult, partly because O'Malley was also drunk but mainly because Morris was on the point of pa.s.sing out. That had been part of the plan, too, but the Hammer had cut his timing a little close. The brow looked awfully steep from the pier.

"What seems to be the problem?"

"Good evening, Master Chief."

"Good evening, Commander. You got the captain with you?"

"Sure could use a hand, too."

"You're not kidding." The chief came down the gangway. Together they got the captain aboard. The really hard part was the ladder up to his stateroom. For this another sailor was summoned.

"d.a.m.n," the youngster observed. "The old man really knows how to tie one on!"

"Takes a real sailorman to know how to get blasted," the master chief agreed. The three of them got him up the ladder. O'Malley took it from there and landed Morris on his bunk. The captain was sleeping soundly, and the flyer hoped the nightmare wouldn't come back. His still did.

NORTHWOOD, ENGLAND.

"Well, Commander?"

"Yes, sir. I think it'll work. I see most of the a.s.sets are nearly in place."

"The original plan had a lesser chance of success. I'm sure it would have got their attention, of course, but this way we just might be able to damage the force severely."

Toland looked up at the map. "The timing is still tricky, but not very different from that attack we made on the tankers. I like it, sir. Sure would solve a few problems. What's the convoy situation?"

"There are eighty s.h.i.+ps a.s.sembled in New York harbor. They sail in twenty-four hours. Heavy escort, carriers in support, even a new Aegis cruiser with the merchants. And the next step after that, of course-" Beattie went on.

"Yes, sir. And Doolittle is the key."

"Exactly. I want you back at Stornoway. I'll also be sending one of my air operations types to work with your chaps. We'll keep you informed of all developments. Remember that distribution for this is to be strictly limited to the personnel involved."

"Understood, sir."

"Off with you, then."

34.

Feelers

USS REUBEN JAMES.

0700 hours came rather early for Jerry O'Malley. He had the lower bunk in a two-man stateroom-his copilot had the upper-and his first considered move was to take three aspirins and sit back down. It was almost funny, he thought. "The Hammer." He felt it inside his head. No, he corrected himself, he had his dipping sonar in there, on automatic ping. Still and all, he had performed something remembered from his youth as a corporal work of mercy, and that helped give purpose to his suffering. He gave the aspirins ten minutes to get into his bloodstream, then went forward to the shower. First cold, then hot water cleared his head.

The wardroom was full but quiet, the officers a.s.sembled according to age into little knots of whispered conversation. These young officers hadn't faced combat before, and the bravado they might have felt on leaving San Diego some weeks before had been replaced with the sober reality of the task at hand. s.h.i.+ps had been sunk. Men they knew were dead. For these kids, fear was a more terrible unknown than the technical aspects of combat for which they had been trained. He could see the question in their faces; only time would answer it. They would learn to endure it, or they would not. Combat held no mysteries for O'Malley. He knew that he would be afraid, and that he would put the fear aside as best he could. There was no sense dwelling on it. It would come soon enough.

"Good morning, XO!"

"Morning, Jerry. I was just going to call the skipper."

"He needs his sleep, Frank." The pilot had disconnected Morris's alarm clock before leaving the stateroom. Ernst read O'Malley's face.

"Well, nothing we really need him for till eleven."

"I knew you were a good XO, Frank." O'Malley debated between bug juice and coffee. The fruit drink this morning was the orange kind-the flavors didn't relate to any particular fruit. O'Malley liked the red kind, but not the orange. He poured some coffee.

"I supervised the torpedo loading last night. We cut a minute off our best time-in the dark."

"Sounds good to me. When's the pre-sail brief?"

"Fourteen hundred, in a theater two blocks from here. COs, XOs, and selected others. I expect you'll want to come, too?"

"Yeah."

Ernst's voice dropped. "You sure the skipper's all right?" There are no secrets aboard a s.h.i.+p.

"He's been on straight combat ops since Day One of this fracas. He needed to get a little unwrapped, an ancient and honored naval tradition"-he raised his voice-"d.a.m.ned shame that all these little boys are too young to partake in it! Didn't anybody think to get a newspaper? NFL summer camps are opened all over the country, and there ain't no paper! What the h.e.l.l kind of wardroom is this!"

"I've never met a dinosaur before," a junior engineering officer observed sotto voce.

"You get used to him," Ensign Ralston explained.

ICELAND.

Two days' rest was just what the doctor ordered for everyone. Sergeant Nichols could almost walk normally on his ankle, and the Americans, who were beginning to regard fish with distinct distaste, filled up on the extra rations the Royal Marines had packed in.

Edwards's eyes traced around the horizon again. The human eye automatically locks onto movement, and she was moving. It was hard not to look. It was almost impossible. In fact, Edwards told himself, it was impossible to stand guard and not look around. The h.e.l.l of it was, she thought it was funny. Their rescuers-Edwards knew better, but why upset her?-had also brought soap. A tiny lake half a mile from their hilltop perch was the designated bathing area. In hostile country no one went that far alone, and the lieutenant had naturally been detailed to look after her-and she after him. Guarding her as she bathed with a loaded rifle seemed absurd, even with Russians around. Her bruises were nearly healed, he noted as she dressed.

"Finished, Michael." They didn't have towels, but that was a small price to pay for smelling human. She came up to him with her hair still wet and an impish expression on her face. "I embarra.s.s you. Sorry."

"It's not your fault." It was also impossible to be angry with her.

"The baby makes me fat," she said. Mike could scarcely tell, but then it wasn't his figure being changed.

"You look fine. I'm sorry if I looked when I shouldn't have."

"What is wrong?"