The Med (48 page)

The ship slanted farther, and then, just when it seemed to hang at the farthest edge of it, thirty-five or forty degrees of roll, the men half-hanging from bulkheads and stanchions and catwalk rails, something else hit the ship. A rogue wave, Wronowicz thought, and even as he thought it he was wrapping his legs around a stanchion. This would be a bad one.

It was.
Ault
seemed to lose her grip on the sea, like an old car hitting a curve with bald tires. Tools broke free and leapt toward the far bulkhead. Four big drums of lubricant freed themselves suddenly from the angle irons where they had been stowed since leaving the States and came rumbling across the engineroom. The ship tipped further, further, and he shot a glance at the clinometer on the bulkhead forward. Fifty degrees! His eyes met Steurnagel's. A can rolled, sure, but there was a point where a ship did not come back. You never knew just where it was, though, until that fatal instant when she kept on going over.

“Chief! Look out!”

Wronowicz snapped his head to see the gear casing lunge toward him, then quiver, brought up short. With the ship almost on her side, its weight had left the chainhoist; it was hanging now only by the steadying ropes, and as he watched, the second one parted with a bang, and the whole immense weight of it lunged again toward him. The last rope on that side tautened, just for a moment, and then it, too, snapped. The ship staggered, paused, then began its roll back to port, but he saw immediately that the one remaining line would never stop that mass of steel once it started back.

“Clear out!” he screamed at the men opposite, forgetting the argument. Callin was staring hypnotized at the gigantic pendulum. “Get away from it!”

The last line broke and the beast was free. The men scattered as it accelerated, taking energy from the roll. Piping crumpled like foil as it drove into the turbines, slowing it not at all. A cloud of vapor burst from a shattered steam line, a hot blinding cloud through which the gear cover, like a wounded elephant, reappeared as the ship rolled again, headed back for the starboard side. At them. He grabbed the ensign's shirt, tearing it as he jerked Callin backward, and they came up against a generator. Metal dug into his back as the gear went by, fanning them with the hot breath of its passage, and severed a condensate line; a geyser of boiling water showered the deck-plates. It hit the port side with a clang that deafened them all, denting a gouge into the thin plating that formed the shell of the ship, then reeled back to starboard as
Ault
careened again. A man screamed and ran from its path; to his horror Wronowicz saw thin streams of seawater burst through the bright edges of the gouged hull, joining into spurting fountains. Callin huddled against him, his eyes on the juggernaut that next destroyed a hundred-and-fifty-pound auxiliary line, triggering a deafening roar of live steam into the air. Wronowicz intuited as much as heard his shout: “Chief! It's tearing the ship apart!”

“You want to try and stop it?”

“Get a line on it—the men—”

“It'll mash a man like a fly.”

Another scream burst from the far side of the compartment, followed by the crash and snap of buckling metal and electrical short circuits. With the steam in the air, neither of them could see who it was.

Wronowicz looked around the compartment. He could see Mason lying face down at the forward end, Polock throwing a terrified look his way from beside him. Steam, blue smoke, and sparks blotted out the men forward. The ship rolled again, and a rumbling noise came from forward. All over the ship it must be havoc. But right here was the worst. If they didn't get this thing stopped it would batter its way right through the hull into the sea. With a flooded engine compartment there would be no reserve buoyancy—no power to keep nose to sea, no power for pumps—

He moved forward warily, in a crouch, watching the top of the pendulum, the chainhoist. It ground and rattled as the weight under it shifted direction, gathered momentum for another pass. He had to stop it, but he did not yet see how. Get a line on it? One would never stop it. They'd have to get several on at once … or else stop it swinging.…

Yeah. Stop it swinging. He saw now. It would be dangerous. But there was no other way.

The casing reappeared, rushing toward them. He crouched, then caught a movement out of the corner of his eye. Callin was moving forward, too.

“Get back, sir!”

“What are you going to do, Chief?”

“Drop it on the deck, by the compressor. Get back.”

“I'll help you. I—”

Wronowicz shoved him. Callin staggered back, recovering quickly, but a second was all that Wronowicz needed. The casing reached the limit of its portward arc, hesitated, and he stepped forward and jumped.

“Chief!”

He thought for a moment that he'd missed, slid scrabbling down the side of the casing; then his hand caught in the chain. Panting, he hauled himself upward as the casing gathered momentum, carrying him with it, a man on the back of a bull. He had a confused sensation of speed, the blur of vision and nausea of a carnival ride, and he hauled himself upright onto the mass of steel. He crouched there, reaching upward, swinging dizzily faster and faster, the engineroom rotating around him. His groping hand found the trip line of the chainhoist. The engineroom swayed. His head snapped back, searching for a clear spot. Had to time the swing, drop it away from the naked gear. There—coming up—

Now
—

He yanked down on the trip. The lever clacked over, the jaws of the hoist opened with a snap; and suddenly he was weightless, riding tons of metal in its short free-fall toward the tilting deck.

In that second, short as it was, he thought of his first day at sea, so long before; of the swell of breasts, the dark eyes of a woman he would never see again; and he began to think something else, something that made sense of it all, put it all together into something shining and meaningful.

It was a machine.
It was a machine.
And the point, the goal, the product of it was—

In the middle of his thoughts came a shock and the clamor of steel. And quite suddenly Chief Kelly Wronowicz found himself lying dazed on the deckplates, watching helplessly as the immense mass of metal reconsidered, decided, and began its irresistible and savage roll toward and over him.

25

U.S.S.
Guam

Thirty miles ahead of the rolling destroyer, sixty thousand yards closer to the moving point toward which now the darkened ships arrowed inward to rendezvous, Dan Lenson lowered his head and rubbed at the knotted muscles around his eyes.

The lamp hummed above the litter of paper that covered his foldout desk. Its white monotone spilled over the tiled deck, strewn with shoes and pencils by the motion of the ship, over the khaki shirt that swayed from a hook, over his down-turned face. The man in the lower bunk, dead asleep, had turned his back to it to escape the glare. He was Lenson's roommate, one of
Guam
's officers, catching a catnap before going on watch again.

No naps for Ike Sundstrom's staff, Lenson thought. Behind him a radioman leaned waiting against the bulkhead. He dropped his hands from his eyes, sighed, and reached for the next stack of paper. It was like an all-nighter back at the Boat School. He saw for a moment his room in Bancroft Hall, just like this at night, compact, Spartan, his old Tensor humming just like this.

Only now he was at sea, where everyone at the Academy had known he would be some day. Where they would have to measure up, not for grades, but for real. At sea, and on his way to action.

He picked up the first sheet and bit his lip, concentrating. There was no time for polishing. This would be final, this scribble in pencil.

SECRET

FM: CTF 61

TO: All Units TF 61

Info: CTF 60

CTF 62

COMSIXTHFLT

CINCUSNAVEUR

JOINT CHIEFS WASH DC

Subj: Revised Operation Plan, Operation URGENT LIGHTNING

1. (S)
Situation. The hostages taken at the U.S. Embassy in Nicosia have been moved by their captors to Ash Shummari, Syria, approximately twenty miles inland and five miles north of the Lebanese border. Electronic intercept of Syrian traffic suggests that the terrorists, with covert support of Syrian authorities, will play out hostage drama from there. Fulfillment of their demands is being explored, but may not be possible due to loss of influence with new Turkish government.

2. (S)
Mission. To resolve the crisis and rescue the hostages, National Command Authority has directed Task Force 61 to carry out an amphibious raid into Lebanon and a land penetration of Syrian territory. This assault will begin on signal this morning.

3. (S)
Execution. American intervention may be opposed by either indigenous or separately landed forces, including Soviet troops or warships. For this reason, upon receipt of this operation order all units will make preparations for a fully supported, combat-prepared landing, although armed force will be used only in response to attack.…

He read through it once more and handed it to the radioman. The opening part of most operation orders was boilerplate. He had lifted the tone, if not the specifics, from the dozen others he had collected during the cruise.

What followed was harder, much harder, and more complex. He had to rewrite the schedule and movement order for the opposed approach, with units spaced for mutual protection against land-based missiles or gunfire; the combat air patrol (CAP) coordination plan, for local vectoring of the fighters that
America
might or might not be there to provide, in case there was an air threat to the amphibious group; the antisubmarine patrol plan; the electronic emission plan, to foil any jamming or radar-homing missiles; and the most technically confusing, the communications plan.

And all that was before the first man put foot on the beach. When they moved from sea to land things got a lot more challenging. To do, and to plan for.

And he had to do it all. Not Red Flasher. Him. He rubbed his eyes again, reached for a cold cup of coffee, and set to work again.

After a hasty midnight consultation with Colonel Haynes' staff, he had decided that the best approach would be two-pronged: a heliborne advance party, to prevent surprise by hostile forces, followed by the main, seaborne strike, carried in the amtracs and landing craft. The air-landing zone they had placed three miles inland, on a rise where the advance party could command the road leading east. They would lift off from
Guam
and
Spiegel Grove
two hours before dawn. A half-hour before first light the seaborne strike would follow. For this the amphibs would do a “turnaway,” racing in to drop the assault force and then retiring out to sea. Byrne said both the Lebanese national army and the Christian militias had U.S. howitzers, and the Shi'ites—largely armed by Syria—had corresponding Soviet equipment up to and including tanks. There was no predicting the reactions or dispositions of any side, and if they expected gunfire from the beach, the thin-skinned ships would have to be in and out again in a hurry.

The LSTs, with the shallowest draft, would close at flank speed until the bottom shoaled. He pulled the chart out to confirm the depths. They'd have to slow when they got close in, or the screws would suck the sterns right into the sand. They would steer by radar bearings on a small group of islands to the south, off Tripoli, and visual bearings on the light at Kleiat. Three miles from the El Aabde beach they would turn and parallel it at a course of 020 degrees true.

At that moment, H minus thirty, six thousand yards from the edge of land, the first wave of amtracs would roll into the sea. The amphibious tanks would form up in lines on guide boats, and then, on command, head for the shore.

Meanwhile, a mile or two farther out, the larger ships would be dropping boats. Already filled with marines, the landing craft would be floated, still safe inside the hulls, as the ships ballasted down. At H minus twenty-five, as the 'tracks began their swim ashore, the “mike boats” would move out of the wells and form for the second wave.

If all went well, they would hit the beach ten minutes after the first amtracs waddled ashore.

An amphibious landing, he had been told, was the most complex thing the Navy did. He believed it. It took exquisite timing, long practice, and fanatic adherence to plan. As the first waves moved ashore, the ships would continue out to sea in a long loop, readying the reserve boats. And then they would come back. The same maneuver, again—no, better use different courses for the second run, in case shore batteries got the range. Yes. He plotted with pencil and dividers, then covered a sheet of yellow paper with coordinates and turn bearings.

The second drop would hit the water twenty minutes after the first. Another ten boats, eight more amtracs. The third and fourth waves would carry supplies, the heavier communications gear, and the rest of the raiding force.

Lenson wrote furiously, glancing from time to time at an exercise oporder, pulling out a pub for reference, punching the phone to the marines, who were working in Haynes' cabin. How many armed troops did an LCM-8 hold? How often could you shut down and bring up a radar without destroying the magnetrons? How many tons of water, fuel, food would the MAU need per day in ninety-degree heat? He knew basically what he was doing, but he would have liked Flasher and Hogan to check it when he was done, to avoid any boners. Unfortunately Sundstrom had them both on the flag bridge, standing lookout watches. So it was all up to him; they were going in this morning, plan or not, and as if to remind him of that, his door opened and the radioman stuck his head in. Dan handed him five more pages and he disappeared again.

He no longer believed, as he once had, that Sundstrom knew what he was doing. But recrimination or protest would only get in the way. Best for the job or not, he had been ordered to get the force ashore. And that he would do.