Their cargo had been quickly loaded onto the aft of the fishing boat and then covered with canvas. What had been a surprisingly precise arrangement of mines was now a massive, dirty tan lump occupying most of the fantail.
“Now,” the officer in the pilothouse ordered. “We are at the first position.”
Rivera nodded. It would do him no harm to make friends with the naval officers, people who might one day in the future look the other way at just the most opportune moments. No, despite the loss of immediate profits, it was worth complying with these requests.
As though he had any choice.
He stepped outside of the pilot house to the aft weather deck and shouted down at his men. A Cuban military officer accompanied each one of them and carefully supervised the operation.
It should be more difficult than this, he thought, watching the massively muscled sailors wrestle a mine out of its wooden crate and onto the deck. From there it was a short heft, two grunts, and a groan to heave it off the back of the ship. He watched the first one throw up a gout of seawater, drenching the men near the fantail.
“Five hundred meters, then another.” The officer’s voice was curt.
Rivera nodded, smiled pleasantly. “Coffee?” he asked politely, gesturing toward the large thermos sitting next to the chart table.
“My wife made it this morning. Very strong.”
The officer seemed to unbend slightly, and a flick of annoyance was replaced by a more neutral expression.
“Thank you. It would be appreciated.”
As he poured two mugs, one for each of them, Rivera thought that getting along with people was not so difficult after all. They were the same almost anywhere you went.
And after a cold, damp morning on the water, anyone would welcome a hot cup of coffee, especially the dark and bitter brew his wife made.
“Five minutes,” the officer said. “Perhaps if you perform this mission satisfactorily, we will give you others in the future.
Ones that are much more lucrative. I have an uncle …”
Rivera sighed as the officer launched into a tale of the excellent cigars produced by his uncle that could not be marketed in the United States. An enterprising man, one who was willing to take a few risks, one who knew the waterswell, there were always possibilities. The master smiled, nodded, and began counting his profits. Smuggling cigars and other illegal cargo into the United States was much more profitable than laying mines this close to an aircraft carrier.
Lieutenant Commander Charles Dunway, company operations officer on board Jefferson and senior surface warfare officer on board the ship, glanced nervously over at the glassed-in bridge way on the starboard side of the ship. The captain and the XO, along with the most senior aviation officer on the ship, were gathered there discussing the intricacies of underway replenishment. Aside from flight operations, it was perhaps the most dangerous evolution the ship engaged in. Making the approach on the oiler, easing up on her from behind seen parallel, exactly matching course and speed with the smaller ship with only 180 feet separating the two vessels was never a routine operation.
At least not to the surface ship sailors. He snorted in disgust. The aviators, though that was a different matter.
Aviation captains followed two career paths in their quest to accumulate stars on their collars. After a tour as a squadron commanding officer, they shifted their focus to being assigned as either the commanding officer of an aircraft carrier or as carrier air wing commander, both senior captain billets. Of the two, command of an aircraft carrier was the preferred track to the stars. But that meant completing the Navy’s grueling Nuclear Power School, as well as prototype reactor training in Idaho. Along the way, the aviator was expected to become at least minimally proficient in ship handling, and that meant taking the conn of an aircraft carrier during underway replenishment.
For surface sailors, conning the ship through an underway replenishment operation meant careful coaching from their own commanding officer and close scrutiny every moment the ship was tied up alongside the oiler.
The evolution was intricately orchestrated, and the surface warrior’s tendency to sweat the details was profoundly in evidence.
Not so with aviators. They figured that if they’d managed to live that long during formation flights at Mach 1, they damned well sure could coach an aircraft carrier through an underway replenishment op at fifteen knots.
No memorizing the standard commands, turning radiuses, and knots per turn of the shaft. No, not for them. All of the important details were written down on a three-by-five card and passed from one to the other as each took his turn at the conn.
Generally, senior surface officers aboard the ship casually turned up on the bridge, keeping a close eye on the evolutions that their seniors in rank but not in experience strived to master. It was never an overt thing, no. The touchy ego of a jet jock would hardly tolerate supervision by a surface warfare officer, but Dunway damned well knew he felt better being below decks when his colleagues were keeping a careful eye on the Airedales.
At least it wouldn’t happen on his watch. The underway replenishment was scheduled for 2100 that night, long after he would have gone off duty. This was merely a briefing session to make sure all of the jet jocks could find their way to the bridge and successfully locate the glassed-in area from which they would supervise the evolution. He sighed.
Life just wasn’t fair.
He looked forward and stared at the ocean in front of the carrier. The seas were running light today, maybe a sea state of two or so, he estimated. Just a few whitecaps, enough to make every detail of the swells visible. Not that heavy seas would have bothered Jefferson.
she was capable of launching aircraft and fulfilling her missions in all but hurricane force winds and seas. Even then, the ship would be in no danger, unlike her smaller brethren.
“Sir! Ready to commence flight operations.” Dunway turned toward the conning officer, who had just received that notification from the air boss.
“Very well. Any contacts in the area?”
The conning officer shook his head. “A few small pop up contacts to the south, that’s about it. Our current course puts us with thirty knots of wind across the deck at zero-zerozero relative.”
Ideal winds for flight operations. The extra wind across the deck would give all aircraft the additional lift they needed to get airborne off the cat shot. Any more, and they might have control problems immediately after the shot; any less, and the heavier aircraft such as the Tomcats wouldn’t be happy.
“Very well,” he repeated, and turned back to the SPA250 radar repeater located in the middle of the bridge. He was certain the conning officer had checked with Combat, but it never hurt to verify the tactical situation oneself.
It was as the conning officer had said. There were two intermittent contacts to the south, carefully annotated and being tracked by the junior officer of the deck, who was standing nervously at his side, white grease pencil clutched in his sweaty palm.
Up ahead, the sea looked clear. Excellent. While a fine ship, even if under the command of aviators, Jefferson was hardly as nimble and maneuverable as her battle group escorts. The 120,000 tons of steel took more than a few minutes to veer from her course. While she would be flying the Foxtrot pennant to indicate she was conducting flight operations, thus giving her the right-of-way over other ships on the ocean, it was common for smaller foreign vessels to ignore the danger signs. He wondered sometimes at the sanity of the other ships and boats, tracking nonchalantly and brazenly across her path. Didn’t they realize that this ship could no more avoid them than a train could stop in time to miss a car parked on the tracks directly ahead?