Firespill (27 page)

Besides himself, the crew of
Ebony I
consisted of Beddoes, the copilot on his right; Si Johnson, the radar navigator, cramped in the cubbyhole of the lower deck together with Peters, the new navigator; the electronics warfare officer, tucked aft of the two navigators; and finally Stokely, who occupied the “M” model’s nose turret with its four .50 machine guns. The “M” model was a modification of the “H” model that used to house a .20 machine gun in the rear turret, remotely controlled by the gunner in the nose. In the earlier models, the gun had had only a maximum vertical and horizontal angle of sixty degrees. But Stokely reckoned that the position of the guns wasn’t that important. This was a nice, peaceable mission, and he and the E.W. officer, whose talents wouldn’t be needed either, looked forward to watching the others do all the work.

The really busy members of the crew would be Burke, the copilot, Peters, and most of all Si Johnson, who as radar navigator would be responsible for the accuracy of the bomb run. Burke had flown with Johnson in Vietnam. He thought of the time they had been forced to eject. At least there wouldn’t be any surface-to-air missiles on this mission. Now the only enemy was the thirty-seven minutes separating them from the submarine.

The plane on his right yawed a little. He switched on the cell intercom. “Let’s keep it tight, fellas. Bernie, you’re wandering.”

“Right. I’ve got it, A.C.”

Burke grinned at his copilot. “Got what, Bernie—the shakes? Come on now, pull her in.”

“Roger.”

Burke felt his own plane lurch and slip to the left. “Stokely, what the hell are you doing? Most of the other guys are green, but you’re supposed to know the drill. Keep your guns straight ahead. Man, you must have ’em at some angle. Feels like we’ve got an extra flap down there.”

“Sorry, Chief. My trigger finger’s itchy.”

“Doesn’t matter; we’re on combat drill. Let’s do it right.”

Stokely’s voice was cheerful. “You’re the boss.”

“So get that turret in line with the plane and stop swiveling it. You can bump us around some other time.”

“Roger.” Stokely brought his guns in line with the bomber’s heading.

“Captain!” Si Johnson cut in from the black, instrument-crowded deck below.

“What is it, Si?”

“There’s something funny on the screen—blips in formation.”

Burke instinctively glanced ahead into the darkness. “Formation? Aircraft?”

Si looked at the sweep again. Each time the arm turned around, more dots appeared. Peters leaned worriedly towards the screen. “Looks like the measles.”

Si Johnson had never seen anything like it. “Not big enough for planes. I’ve double-checked all reports, domestic and foreign, and they say the area should be clear. But there’s hundreds—thousands—of ’em, all bunched together. It’s massive. No recognizable pattern.”

Burke switched in to the others on the intercell radio. Soon
Ebony II
was calling the lead bomber. “Same pattern here, Captain.”

“Ebony Three to Ebony One. We’ve got it too.”

He spoke quickly to the two cells behind him. “Gold and Purple, is it on your screens?”

“Gold leader to Ebony One. Affirmative, Captain.”

“Purple leader to Ebony One. Affirmative.”

There was a pause as Burke searched his memory. The only thing he could recall remotely like it was the loads of tinfoil flakes they’d dropped in World War Two to confound German radar crews; but this obstruction was moving horizontally, not falling. His voice was calm, but his copilot thought he detected a note of anxiety in it. He spoke now to the whole wave. “All right, anybody got any ideas? Anybody? How about you new boys? Peters?”

The young navigator shrugged at Si Johnson and looked back embarrassedly at the E.W. officer for help. The latter held up his hands, at a loss. Peters answered reluctantly, “No ideas down here, Captain.”

The approaching Arctic front was a dark canopy over them, so Burke did not even have the slight benefit of moonlight. Beyond his cockpit all was completely dark. He looked at his air speed indicator. “How fast is it closing, Si?”

“Moving slow, sir. About thirty miles per hour. But we’ll hit it—around ten minutes from now.”

Burke looked at the clock amid the mass of dials before him. It was now nearly 2203.

On the lower deck, Si Johnson’s left hand clenched on a metal calculator until his knuckles whitened. Suddenly he was drenched in cold sweat. He leaned stiffly back against his seat; his right leg and arm were beginning to shake uncontrollably. Peters switched off his intercom, reached over, and touched him on the arm. “Hey, sir—Si, you okay?”

As if he had just become aware of where he was, Johnson turned his head sharply towards the navigator. “What? Get your hands off me, goddamn it! I’m okay—just a little indigestion. Goddamn junk they give us.”

Peters apologized and turned his intercom back on. He believed what Johnson had told him. But had he known enough Vietnam veterans, he would almost certainly have recognized the symptoms of flashback. In any case, he was new to
Ebony I
and he wasn’t about to say anything to anyone, particularly now. The captain was back on the intercom. “Si, give me an altitude to clear this, whatever it is.”

Johnson found it difficult to focus on his radar set. He spoke slowly. “Three—”

“Three what, for Christ’s sake?”

“Thousand—three thousand feet.”

Stokely interrupted in a tone of happy relief. “That’s no problem. In Nam we dropped our eggs from thirty thousand. That right, Si boy?”

There was no immediate answer as Johnson, switching off his intercom, leaned back on the seat, terrified. He felt trapped in the black hole of the lower deck, the instruments pressing in around him like malevolent eyes in the night. But even in his fear he managed to shoot a warning glance at Peters. Cowed, the newcomer stayed silent.

Above them in the cockpit, Burke again checked the clock and altimeter. “No way,” he said. “We can’t risk going another thousand. That would put us smack into that cloud. We’re going to have a hard enough time seeing anything below as it is. Si, how’s that sub’s DF signal?”

Peters looked over at Si and was surprised again by the change in him. Now he appeared to be the calm veteran Peters had heard about. “We’re right on it, Captain, but it’s weaker’n grandma’s tea. They’re losing power all the time. Could cease transmission any second.”

Burke, knowing that at this speed a minute off course would cost him at least ten miles, was quick to respond. “That settles it. We’ve got to stay on course. Can’t afford evasive action.” He paused, then said as coolly as he could, “We’ll have to go right through ’em.”

Si watched the radar sweep again. The screen was no longer speckled with dots but covered with a glowing sheet, so thick and widespread were the oncoming blips. Stokely burst in, his voice raw. “It’s the moon. I bet it’s the goddamn moon showing up on the screen.”

Burke, holding the steering yoke more firmly than usual as they passed over slight turbulence, snapped at the gunner, “Stokely, will you shut up? It’s not the moon, you hayseed. Christ, you’d have us over China by now.”

The electronics warfare officer, who immediately thought in terms of MIGs and surface-to-air missiles, cut in worriedly. “They’re awful thick, Cap’n. Chicken-shit or not, we only need a few to hit us in the right place.”

Aware that he might have alarmed the wave with his reprimand to Stokely, Burke spoke encouragingly to the whole cell, particularly to the new boys. “Hell, Ebony, we’ve had bigger stuff than this thrown at us.”

Hart, the radar navigator in
Ebony II
, felt his throat going dry. “I—I wasn’t in Nam, sir.”

“Well I was, son. Don’t worry. Hang in there—you’re doing a good job. Just you keep an eye on Si over here. He’ll lead the bomb run. Can do it in his sleep.”

Hart’s answer was stoic and quite unconvincing. “I’m not worried, sir.”

“Good. Now, Ebony gunners, listen carefully. We’re not carrying rockets, so we’ve got nothing we can blast ahead to clear a gap for us except the .50s. Your job’ll be to blow a hole through whatever it is so the wave can keep going. Just concentrate on your own sectors and don’t stray into another guy’s. It’s all up to you. I want a nice big circle of nothing right in front of my nose. Got it?”

“Ebony Two. Got it, A.C.”

“Ebony Three. Roger, Captain.”

For an instant, as he cocked the four .50 cannons, Stokely wished that he was aboard the early model B-52’s, tucked away in the tail.

Now Burke was talking to the whole wave. “I want all cells to stay tight together. Remember, we haven’t time to fool around regrouping. The looser we are, the less concentrated our bombing’ll be near the sub and the greater our chances of being hit by whatever’s coming at us. Gold and Purple leaders, if anything happens to us, carry on with the bomb run. Use Cape Bingham as your initial point, make the turn sooth, and take the sub’s position as your offset aiming point.”

“Gold A.C. to Ebony leader. Got it.”

“Purple A.C. to Ebony leader. Will do.”

Sarah Kyle had simply been informed by Esquimalt Naval Command that the
Swordfish
was experiencing some “difficulty,” but that “remedial action” was under way. It did not occur to her to ask for more information. She didn’t want to know. Instead, despite the lateness of the Indian summer night, she changed from her nightgown into her gardening clothes—chocolate corduroys, floppy beige sweater, and runners—switched on the backyard floodlight, and made her way out into the garden. Amid the sweet-smelling roses every noise was familiar, every perfume immediately identifiable, and she felt less afraid of the darkness beyond the light than of the unknown which might be visited upon her by sketchy and speculative TV and radio reports about the rescue.

The bombers were less than thirty minutes from Cape Bingham as she began to prune the visible part of the rampant Van Vliet rosebush which in James’s absence had entwined itself about the porch, trailing off along the leeward side of the house where the thorny tentacles below the small, white pink blossoms laid claim to every projection and irregularity in the cedar surface. When James came home, she would ask him to prune it fully. Next, she moved to the Nocturne rose bed, giving it special attention in an effort to keep alive as many blossoms as possible, for these were his favorites.

Less than a quarter of a mile away, in a condominium suite with an uninterrupted view of the Kyles’ house, Philip Limet, ex-commander of the
Swordfish
, who was still recovering from his near-fatal heart attack of three months before, became aware of a pungent, burning odor trailing from the kitchen. Alice Limet hadn’t been watching the warming milk very carefully, and before she could turn off the gas it had boiled up, frothing wildly onto the stove. Alice, who had seen the figure moving about in the Kyles’ backyard and who had just been able to identify her neighbor through the field binoculars she always kept handy, was in a quandary. She was trying to make up her mind as to whether she should ring Mrs. Kyle and tell her what one of the junior officers visiting from the Canadian Forces Esquimalt Base had told Philip a half hour earlier.

During the twenty years of their marriage—even before they had been engaged—she had always wanted to know where her husband was. It was a trait she had inherited from her mother, another navy wife. Of course the navy hadn’t always told her, especially during the Korean War, but given the choice, she had always preferred to know the danger he was in rather than sit night after day waiting for the call that wives dread. But Alice knew that not all service wives felt like that.

She had never been close to the Kyles, despite their physical proximity. They had met rarely and rather formally at that. Perhaps, she thought, Mrs. Kyle was one of those funny types who really do believe that no news is good news. But perhaps she wasn’t like that; perhaps she would like to know. The decision whether or not to ring Sarah Kyle was absorbing all her concentration. It was so hard to tell.

“Do you think I should?” It was ten years since she had been in London, but her cockney accent still came back when she was worried.

Philip sat reading the latest on the extent of the firespill under banner headlines in the Victoria
Times
. He didn’t want anything to do with it. “Please yourself. I don’t know what women think about these things.”

“Then you think I shouldn’t?” called Alice, sacrificing her nightly capuccino so that Philip could have the salvaged milk.

Limet turned the page. There were no new details about the fire other than its approximate composition and size, which the newspaper estimated was already approaching thirty thousand square miles. “Oh, I don’t know. Perhaps you’d better leave it to H.Q. to tell her what they’re trying to do.”

Alice’s opinion of H.Q. came through as a scornful “Huh!” from the kitchen. She whipped, rather than stirred, the coffee. “H.Q.? Informing her at this time of night? Are you serious? They won’t tell her anything till the morning, ducky. Till the morning. I’m surprised they don’t shut down the radar and everything at the weekends.” She looked up from the coffee. “I’ll never forget that time my dad was on that boat, remember?—that escort convoy to Archangel.”

“Archangel?”

“That’s what I said. In Russia. Well, they never told us a thing. Next morning Mum read that a whole convoy had been lost on that route. We thought he was gone, we truly did. And H.Q. didn’t say a thing.”

Limet put down his paper in a flurry of frustration. “I’ve told you, Alice, it was probably for security reasons. Just like this plane business. I expect they’re keeping it quiet because it’s something to do with the Americans being involved. There’s nothing in the papers except a few aerial photos.”

Alice was still thinking about the convoy to Archangel. “Security! The papers had if all in next morning. And how about our feelings? Don’t talk to me about security. H.Q. don’t care. If it wasn’t for that nice young man coming around to visit you this evening, we wouldn’t have heard about those planes. I’ll bet Mrs. Kyle hasn’t been told.”