Santana wheeled on her. He pointed at the television screen. “Perhaps this will be a sufficiently important story for you to reconsider.” He gestured at the aide, who punched the play button.
The picture started out grainy, then gradually resolved into a clear pattern of light and dark. As the cameraman found his focal length, the dark shape in the middle of the screen became a small boat crammed with people. It plowed up and down the waves, rolling from side to side in the gentle swells and threatening to capsize even in the relatively calm seas. The camera panned to the right and refocused, and a large aircraft carrier came into view.
The shot was taken from almost sea level, and the ship looked like a massive, towering gray cliff. The cameraman zoomed in, focusing on the number on the side of the steel superstructure jutting up from the flight deck, the island.
Pamela recognized the number immediately. The USS Jefferson. Even if she hadn’t known that it was on presence patrols in the Caribbean, the hull number was indelibly ingrained in her memory.
The camera panned back to the small boat. The people in it now were standing up, gesturing, and Pamela could see their mouths opening as they screamed. Panic and as the cameraman zoomed back to include both the aircraft carrier and the small boat in one frame, she understood the reason why. Jefferson was bearing down on the small boat with all the inevitability and imponderability of an avalanche. In a battle between two ships for right-of-way, tonnage always wins, and there was no doubt in her mind as to the outcome of this encounter.
As she watched, the distance between the two ships gradually decreased.
The Jefferson’s aspect changed, becoming slightly more bow-on to her, but still Pamela could see that there was no way it could miss the other ship. She imagined the panic that must be taking place on Jefferson, as frantic in its own style as the terror of the people in the small boat. To die, or to be responsible for others’ deaths?
She knew which was worse.
It was like watching the O. J. Simpson car chase, with the white Bronco rolling slowly down vacant interstates. Minutes passed, and if it had not been for the impending tragedy, it would have been almost as boring.
Finally, the inevitable. Jefferson’s clean-cut bow rolled over the midsection of the small boat, cutting it cleanly in half. The damage drove the small ship underwater immediately, dumping the horde of passengers into the sea. She could see a few of them churning up, tiny white flecks next to the skin of the ship; then those too disappeared.
It was over just seconds after it began.
The aide punched the stop button, freezing the video on the last scene.
There was no evidence of the encounter in the curling water around Jefferson’s hull, in the gentle arc of the bow waves that rolled off her steel sides.
“You wish to see it again?” Santana asked. The aide began to rewind the tape.
She shook her head. “When did this happen?” she asked, grasping for details to avoid acknowledging the horror of what she’d just seen.
“Where?”
“Just north of our coast. And the time? About two hours ago, I think.
Maybe more.” He regarded her sardonically, evil cruelty in his look.
“Is that timely enough to be newsworthy for you. Miss Drake? I assure you, there is no other network in the world that will have firsthand coverage of this event. And the United States Navy’s own message traffic will support the occurrence of the actual event. If you would like to wait for that, for some other network to attend a stateside briefing and scoop you on this matter, we will be glad to oblige. We had just thought …” He let his voice trail off delicately.
“No. I want it. It’s something it’s something the American public needs to see.” Already the words were taking shape in her mind, the damning indictment of Tombstone’s old ship callously running down a group of people seeking freedom. She would get three minutes, maybe even four the lead story, at any rate. Excerpts from the videotape, along with her narrated coverage, would be replayed hourly at the top of the hour until some other critical world event bumped it off the schedule.
Some small part of her mind kept insisting there was more to the story than this. The American ship must have tried to avoid the small boat; she’d seen that from the way the angle on the bow changed in the course of those few minutes. Tried, but hadn’t been able to.
She knew from Tombstone’s long discourses on operations at sea that small craft were difficult to detect, even harder sometimes to pick out from the ocean by visual observation. That was why the rules of the road gave the larger, less maneuverable ship the right-of-way in most circumstances.
The truth, but a rotten story. Atrocities sell better than tragedies.
She’d learned that lesson years ago in Bosnia, in Desert Storm, in a thousand other combat venues around the world. No, even if she didn’t report it this way, her competitors would. And their ratings would outstrip hers in a New York minute.
“Who took this video?” she said suddenly. Santana smiled. Her gut churned as she considered the full implications of the matter. Not only had Jefferson plowed over the ship, but Santana had been somewhere within observation range, watching, and doing nothing to warn either the carrier or the small boat containing his countrymen of the danger.
She wondered whether the story she would report could ever begin to match the horror of the reality.
She took a deep breath. “Get my cameraman.”
“Incoming signal,” the operations specialist snapped. He kept his eyes glued on the screen and repeated the information over the secondary channel. “Captain, it’s a firing order.”
Seated in his tactical action officer chair, the captain stared at the display in front of him. It shivered, shifted, then resolved itself into a mirror image of the display in front of the Joint Chiefs of Staff. A red pip targeting indicator popped into view next to the missile site the carrier SEALs had found.
“Helluva thing, not having control over your own missiles,” the chief petty officer of the watch said, his voice tight with disgust. “We’re no better than a goddamned bunch of monkeys to them.”
The captain turned. “Let’s keep that quiet. Chief. We’ve done our job, getting weapons into the firing basket. If Washington wants to control the weaponeering themselves, we’ll let them. It’s not like we have a choice.”
The chief pursed his lips and scowled. “Helluva way to run a war.”
“Weather deck secure,” the OOD reported over the bitch box. “Standing by to enable launching circuits.”
“Enable the circuits,” the captain echoed, nodding at the tactical action officer.
The TAO nodded, reached across the console, and gave his key one quick twist to the right. The captain did the same on his console. He sat back in his chair, sighed, and waited for the shot.
Moments later, he felt the dark rumble start down in the bowels of the ship, creep its way up the girders and strakes that made up the hull, and vibrate underneath his feet. The ship was ready; he could tell even without the weapons status indicators flashing warnings in front of him. The first shot fired by the Arsenal in anger, and it wouldn’t even be at his command.
Suddenly, the hatches centered in the video camera popped open. Within seconds, a ripple of Tomahawk cruise missiles heaved themselves out of their vertical launch slots, seemed to hesitate above the deck in midair, then blasted the nonskid with fire. They gained altitude quickly after that, the noise and smoke from their propulsion systems blackening the deck and obscuring the picture on the camera.