In the heaving darkness eleven hundred miles northeast of Japan, the rain-lashed flight deck of the U.S. carrier Salt Lake City was a roaring blaze of blue-white light, slivers of red, yellow, and green piercing the frenzied air. The carrier battle group of ten warships centered about Salt Lake City was thirty-six hours, less than halfway from the Aleutians, but its airborne screen and combat air patrols had been up since leaving the Korean waters.
As one of the pancake-rotodomed Hawkeyes, part of the carrier’s early-warning airborne screen, came in to land, three twin-engined “electronic countermeasures” Prowlers were warming up for the waist catapult, their bent “bee stinger” refueling nose rods casting strange shadows on the deck.
“He’s tired,” said the assistant LO, the landing officer in his yellow ID vest waving off a second Hawkeye for another run around, the plane already in its bolter pattern.
“Tired gets you killed,” yelled the LO, hand over his extended throat mike. The Hawkeye was coming in again.
“Looking good for the three-wire,” said the ALO, the plane approaching in low over the fantail.
“Clean trap,” confirmed the ALO, the Hawkeye’s nose dipping, power off, lurching to a stop. Seconds later its three moles, electronic warfare operators, came out. Arms extended, grasping the shoulders of the men in front of them, they were led through the blaze of light like blind men, their eyes not yet readjusted after the hours of near total darkness in the windowless aft of the Hawkeye’s electronic cave. As the seaman led them out of harm’s way across the hose-strewn deck, green-jacketed men checked the arrester cable, a blue jacket driving his yellow “mule” out to push the plane as quickly as possible to the “parking lot.” Another Hawkeye, its rotodome already up, well above the fuselage, turned about at the refueling station, as a “grape” jacket, with ear-muffs, quickly hooked up a wire-wrapped pressure hose, pumping a load of JP-5 fuel into the aircraft. Two men, green shirts, sprinted through the rain to Frank Shirer’s F-14 Tomcat as he and his radar intercept officer stood by, trying not to look upset. The two green jerseys, maintenance men, flicked up an access panel and replaced a black box.
“Try it!” one yelled at the top of his lungs, and the second man watched the cockpit as the Tomcat’s HUD lit up.
“A-OK!” the man screamed back, thumbs up.
“Thanks,” said Shirer, his voice drowned in the fury of a Prowler, a blast sheet up as the plane roared off the waist catapult into the rain-driven night.
On a mission to try to protect Shemya Island from an ominous buildup of Russian fighters and bombers at Petropavlovsk on the Kamchatka Peninsula, no one admitted to being scared. They were too busy thinking about what they had to do. Next to submarine duty, working a carrier’s flight deck was the most dangerous job in the navy, made especially so this night by the line of squalls sweeping in all the way from the Sea of Japan. Screaming across the carrier’s deck, the wind gusts and shears combined with the back-blasts in a fierce hodgepodge of crosscurrents that could blow a man off the deck like a tumbleweed. The only good thing about this night was that the smell of Avgas wasn’t so astringent, the winds whipping fumes away as soon as they rose.
The first wave of fighters having taken off to go ahead and cover the carrier’s “Wild Weasels,” the advance electronic-jamming Prowlers, it was now Shirer’s turn as leader of the second wave. His cockpit closed, the Tomcat’s two twenty-thousand-pound Pratt and Whitney turbofans in high scream, preflight check completed, Shirer asked his RIO — radar intercept officer — if he was all set.
“Ready to go, Major?”
The Tomcat’s light gray fuselage appeared angular, ungainly, from the carrier’s island, the two intakes cumbersomely boxlike, until the plane turned under the lights, presenting its streamlined profile, the two flyers’ names stenciled alongside the cockpit bright white as Shirer lined her up with the starboard bow catapult track. A yellow jacket, both his flashlights arcing, walked back as the jet fighter inched forward. Two red-jacketed ordnance men appeared in front of the plane and shone their flashlights directly onto the tips of the Tomcat’s Sidewinder missiles. Through his headphone Shirer heard the faint burr, its sound like the rundown battery sound in a car. The heat-seeking missiles were now armed and live. The Tomcat’s nose settled, its chin gently nudging the catapult’s hook as the latter was attached to the nose wheel’s strut. Across, left of him, through the rain- and steam-filled night, Shirer could see his wingman lining up on the port bow catapult.
The twin exhausts of Shirer’s F-14 turbofans wailed in zone three, having changed from red through crimson to bright orange, harsh on the deck crew’s eyes, and now moved to zone four, purplish white, and then, with the engines in the high banshee of zone five, the exhaust turned to screaming white circles edged in icy blue.
The catapult officer saw both men had “hands off” instruments so as not to interfere with catapult launch. Shirer saw the yellow-clad catapult officer drop to the left knee, right hand extended seaward. The shooter in his “dugout” pushed the button. Shirer sucked in his breath for the “kick,” the F-14 shooting forward from zero to 180 miles per hour in three seconds. Shirer, feeling his whole body slam back into the seat, ejaculated under the G force as they were hurled aloft, then took back the controls, the white slab of the carrier tilting crazily downhill in the rear vision, flecks indicating the nine ships in the carrier’s screen coming up on the RIO’s radar.
On the carrier, where he was one of the team of professionals handling up to forty jet aircraft in various stages of takeoff, loading, refueling, and arming on a slab of steel shorter than most commercial airport concourses, a ground crew plane captain, brown jacket sodden with spray and wind-driven rain, jumped down from checking a Tomcat’s Martin-Baker rear eject seat. He saw the left bow cat’s blast deflector up, and bent down, head low, hand on his helmet to be on the safe side. A weapons trolley, low to the deck and unloaded, lurched, smacked him on the thigh, pushing him just left of the deflector. A quick-thinking ordnance man hauled him down on the deck, but a wind gust caught him in the slip of the jet’s blast and he was gone.
“Man overboard!” came through to the bridge. The “air boss” in the tower kept his eyes on the plane-crowded deck, the two men on the situation board moving the small magnetic plane models according to their new disposition — there were still twelve Tomcats to launch, the second wave of Shirer’s arrowhead formation. The huge, ninety-thousand-ton ship would not turn, nor would it stop. It was up to the “rescue” department to pick up the man, either with its launches or silver Sea King chopper hovering a safe distance off from the carrier, its red and green lights blinking, hardly visible, however, in the black void beyond the ship’s undulating apron of light.
Ironically, the light from the carrier so flooded the sea immediately about her hull that the plane captain’s saltwater-activated safety light, normally quite visible in darkness, was not seen. The captain of Salt Lake City had never met him— there were six thousand men aboard.
They called up his file from SHIPCO — ship’s personnel computer — and gave the details to the executive officer, it being his job to write the boy’s parents, farm people in Springfield, Missouri.
Already sixty miles from the carrier, Shirer, on strict radio silence, checked his head-up display and vectored in the present tail wind, which would be against them coming back — if they came back. Even with drop tanks carrying enough fuel for a maximum two-thousand-mile round trip, the computer was telling Shirer and his RIO that they would have only four minutes over Shemya Island. Still, last intelligence reports to the carrier relayed by the pick-up station at Adak Naval Station east of Shemya reported that everything was quiet on Shemya and that in what was a crucial game for the pennant, the New York Yankees had doubled the Boston Red Sox four to two.
When the phone burred, Jay told the girl to get out of bed and go and answer it. “I left it in the bathroom,” he said.
“You should turn it off,” said the girl. She was seventeen — consenting age. Jay La Roche was very careful about that.
“Don’t you fucking tell me what to do, you little tight-ass,” said La Roche, using his foot to push her out of the bed. He watched her walk away with an indifference bred of boredom.
“Just a moment,” he heard her say. She brought in the phone. Jay snatched it, cupping the mouthpiece. “You can go. There’s a hundred by the lamp.”
“We didn’t even start,” she said.
“No, well, I want a real woman. You don’t know your ass from your tit. And put on the lock when you go out.”
He turned back to the phone. “La Roche here,” he said, pulling a Kleenex and wiping his nose.
“It’s me,” said the congressman, careful not to give his name.
“That was quick. So what’s the story?”
“Listen — I did the best I could—”
Jay scrunched the Kleenex into a tight ball. “What are you telling me, Congressman?”
“Jesus, don’t use my—”
“What are you saying, damn it?” pressed La Roche, throwing off the covers and getting out of bed.
“Look, there’s some kind of flap going on up there.”
“Up where?”
“The islands. COMPAC said he’d put the request through, but there’s nothing he can do right now. She and a bunch of other nurses have been sent to some naval base hospital. Adak, I think it was.”
“You jerkin’ me off?”
“No, hey, wait a minute. I did my best.”
“You did fuck all. I want results. You’re the big politico. You’d better get me results, Congressman, or you’re going to lose your friggin’ reelection committee. I meant what I said. Now, you get to it. I want her, you hear me? I want her here. In Honolulu. In a fucking week. Otherwise — you’re in the morning edition. Photos and all.” La Roche slammed the phone down and looked at himself in the mirror for a few moments, admiring his lean physique and how well hung he was. He made his way to the bed, opened a drawer in the night table, and took out her photo. Like a brunette Marilyn Monroe, someone had said. She wasn’t, but her lips — yes, Jay would give her the lips and the figure, but her eyes were so different, shy yet not timid. How much had she changed? Touching the photo, he got into bed and, in a rage, started to weep.
Suddenly he sat bolt upright. It was time to kick ass. He wanted her now — goddamn it, she could be killed up there. Snatching the phone, he got up and walked over to the globe on the plush burl coffee table, and in the soft peach light, looked to see if he could find Adak. Christ, it was just a spot in the ocean. To hell and gone. All he’d heard about was Shemya and the big early-warning radar there. What if the Russians hit this Adak as well as the base on Shemya? Had anyone thought of that?
Admiral Brodsky’s motorcade had passed by the Kadriorg Park as Malle was halted by the MPO guardsmen who had seen her earlier with the corporal. Distraught, so weak she’d collapsed and had to be carried out of the park, where a crowd was garnering, she was taken to MPO headquarters across the street in front of the old city hall, and charged with murder.
Alarm spread throughout the MPO and other occupation troops. If a fifty-five-year-old woman, one of the normally passive Estonians, the “handholders,” as they’d been dubbed since 1989, when they’d helped form a human chain with the other Balts to protest Russian hegemony, could strike so wantonly and brutally against the occupying troops, the situation was getting out of hand.
The matter was brought to Admiral Brodsky’s attention at once, though the woman’s name was not mentioned. Was she a suspected saboteur? he asked Malkov.
“No, Admiral, but that doesn’t mean—”
“Don’t tell me what it doesn’t mean. You’ve let these Estonian renegades run rampant. STAVKA’s still receiving reports of dud ammunition all over the place. When I initially recommended you, I thought you were tough enough to put an end to it. I was persuaded that the MPO could handle it better than the GRU. Obviously I was misinformed.”
“With all due respect, Admiral,” replied Malkov, “we’ve shot over six hundred hostages already in an attempt—”
“In an attempt, yes. But it obviously isn’t working, is it?”
“I believe it is, Comrade Admiral. Informants are telling us for the first time that there is enormous internal pressure on the saboteurs to give themselves up for the sake of any further hostages. I believe it is only a matter of days before-”
“Captain Malkov,” Brodsky cut in, “I am officially taking over this operation.” He looked at his watch. “Sixteen forty hours. From now on it will revert to GRU jurisdiction under my command. You will be reassigned to Riga headquarters.”
Malkov waited for more details, but Brodsky had nothing further to add.
When Malkov stormed out to his half-track in front of city hall, his mouth was set grimly, eyes brimming in such temper that his driver could tell it was going to be a bad day, or rather, what was left of it. He hesitated to say anything at all to the captain, but a call had just come through on the radio from the docks.
“What’s it about?” snapped Malkov.
“I don’t know, sir. The lieutenant asked me to—”
“All right, all right,” growled Malkov, “give me the phone.”
“Lieutenant — Malkov here. What is it?”
“Sir, it seems that your hostages are cracking the silence. We received an anonymous message this morning from number three shipyard. Six men are willing to talk, but only on condition that we will recognize them as members of the Estonian Liberation Front. That is, they want us to treat them as prisoners of war. And no more hostages are to be shot.”
Malkov sat back in his seat, the driver, having overheard the conversation, equally relieved.
“Tell them,” said Malkov, “we will agree to that on one condition. We want all saboteurs to come forward by ten hundred hours tomorrow. Otherwise we will continue to take hostages and they will have lost their chance. From then on, they would be treated as spies and shot on the spot.”
“Yes, sir.”
Beaming, Malkov handed his driver the phone. “To barracks, Igor. It’s time for a drink.”
“Yes, sir.”
The following morning at number three shipyard, fourteen men and five women gave themselves up, but Malkov did not get the credit for it, as the official documentation showed he had been relieved of his assignment at 1640 the day before the surrender was made, under Brodsky’s reign of authority. Furthermore, Malkov’s agreement that they would be treated as POWs had no legal standing under military law — not that he had intended to keep his word anyway.
Brodsky fed the prisoners well and told them he expected a full list of all saboteurs in three days, or five hundred hostages he had ordered rounded up would be shot along with the nineteen.
The dam broke and over fifty names were presented to Brodsky. One day later, Brodsky signed an order that the saboteurs be sent to the shale oil fields around Kohtla-Järve, ninety miles east of Tallinn.
“I made at least twenty duds on the day I gave up,” declared an old man defiantly as they were taken on their way. “I scratched ‘MJ’ on them, too.”
The others obviously didn’t know what he was talking about. “That women who shot that corporal bastard. Her name was Malle Jaakson — MJ, see?”
“Huh,” grunted one of the others, his tone surly. “A lot of good it’ll do her.”
“Or us,” added another. But soon the tensions among them and the animosities over whether or not they should have surrendered after all were lost beneath the overwhelming fact that they’d had no choice but to give in if they didn’t want to see the slaughter go on. The emotional strain had been tremendous, and to revive their spirits, some of the oldest aboard the trucks began singing the Estonian national anthem. The convoy stopped for a while in the forest outside the city of Rakvere, and the prisoners were machine-gunned.
As Brodsky asked to sign the death warrant for the murderer of the MPO corporal and unscrewed the cap of his gold Parker pen, he noticed the first name of the woman was Malle. When he turned the page in the file and saw her photo, his hand froze. “Has this woman been interrogated?” he asked his aide.
“Oh, she confessed,” the aide assured him. “There’s no doubt about it, Admiral. Claims it was rape, of course. Trouble is, she was apparently having it off with the corporal for sometime.”
“Where is she?” Brodsky asked curtly.
The aide was confused — where else would she be but here? “Here, sir. In cells.”
“Bring her to me.”
“It wasn’t a forced confession, sir. The woman fully admitted to having—”
“Bring her to me!” Brodsky repeated.
The aide had never seen him so agitated. The admiral rose and seemed to grow angrier by the second. “Don’t you understand a simple order?” he shouted.
“Yes, sir.”
“Immediately!”
“Yes, Admiral.”
The aide was utterly perplexed. It was a shut-and-closed case. No matter what the circumstances, it was murder. The penalty — death.