“Seal Team Six?” Tombstone asked.
His uncle nodded. “As you said, the only way to do this is with special forces. And since its on foreign soil, the CIA is right in the thick of it.”
“Did they know it was going down?” Tombstone asked, a hint of disbelief in his voice. “Because, if they did, and they didn’t do anything to stop it, then—” He stopped, as the full import of his words hit him. If the CIA knew this was happening and didn’t put out a warning, then there’s going to be hell to pay.
But his uncle was shaking his head. “I don’t think so — at least, not in advance. There may have been some signs of it, in retrospect, but hindsight is always twenty-twenty. No, they didn’t know and decide not to tell the rest of us. It’s not a Coventry situation.”
During World War II, after the Allies had broken the Enigma Code, they had intercepted a message indicating that the Germans planned a bombing raid on the village of Coventry. They were faced with the agonizing choice of warning the village and stopping the attack with air power, or allowing the attack to proceed in order to avoid compromising their intelligence sources. In the end, it had been decided that revealing to the Germans that Enigma had been broken would cost more lives than allowing the attack on Coventry.
“So, now Don Stroh is calling you?” Tombstone asked.
“Who is he, anyway?” the younger pilot asked. Tombstone glanced over at his uncle, who shook his head.
“What?” the younger pilot demanded.
“You don’t have a need to know,” the senior Magruder said bluntly. “For now, let’s just say that Don Stroh is sometimes involved in some military operations. And this time, we may be tasked to support him.”
“How?” Tombstone asked.
“As you said, one of the problems is that a foreign nation is involved. It would seem to be in our interest to avoid having the United States look like it’s the solution to this problem. Rather, we would like for Russia, Bermuda, and the United Kingdom to solve this one on their own. So, any involvement by the United States is going to be in the form of covert operations.”
“Are you saying we’ve been asked to get involved?” Tombstone asked.
“Certain people have certain information about what’s going on behind the scenes. In particular, apparently there is a renegade Russian general in charge of this. He’s holed up in Chechnya, and you can guess how much the Russians want to start a new offensive there. It’s like digging a rat out of a hole — you need a good terrier to do it.”
“I still don’t see what we have to do with this,” Tombstone said.
“You have to remember, the Russian military is in a state of disarray. Many of their officers and enlisted men have not been paid in months. Their loyalty, quite frankly, is questionable. And this man, this Korsov fellow, is a popular officer. But the last thing we want is further instability in Russia. Therefore, this mission has to be accomplished by the Russians — or, at least, it has to appear that the Russians have done it. The objective is to behead the snake. Without Korsov, the entire operation will fall into disarray.”
“I still don’t get it,” the younger pilot said. “What does this have to do with us?”
For the first time since he’d turned on the television, a trace of a smile crossed the senior Magruder’s face. He looked squarely at his nephew and asked, “How you feel about flying a MiG?”
It was only after they were well clear of the channel and in deeper water, running at a depth of 500 feet, that the impact of what they’d done really struck Forsythe. Before that, they’d been running on adrenaline, reacting to the gunshots, frantically struggling to get underway, and then sweating out exiting the harbor channels and avoiding other traffic. Cowlings had proved to be unflappable. It was as though he had done this every day of his Navy life, although Forsythe knew nothing could be farther from the truth. Cowlings had never gotten the ship underway without the captain and the XO on board, and he had certainly not done it without tugs, except perhaps the simulator. And never, ever, with only a third of the crew on board. Yet, to look at Cowlings, you would have thought this was a completely normal and unremarkable operation.
And Forsythe saw how that attitude transmitted itself to the crew. Without even leaving the Control Room, Cowlings seemed to be everywhere at once, keeping track of the engineering configuration, dictating messages to Second and Sixth Fleet, and, in one quick moment, even ordering the senior mess management specialist to conduct an inventory of their supplies, reminding him that they would need to eat at their battle stations if the ship went to general quarters.
Already the ELF, or extremely low frequency, receiver was slowly printing its digitally coded messages. The data rate over ELF was extremely low, and the messages consisted of pre-formatted codes to cram the maximum amount of information into the minimum amount of bandwidth. But after they out-chopped the harbor, once they settled in at normal cruising depth and speed, it wasn’t even the fact that they had no operational orders in hand to tell them what to do next that brought home to Forsythe the seriousness of their situation. No, it was that no one came to relieve him. Normally, at this point, they would have secured the sea and anchor detail, and commenced the normal watch standing rotation. However, with only a third of the crew on board, the reduced manning just blew the hell out of any watch bill ever conceived for the ship.
Cowlings looked over at the chief, and they seemed to reach an understanding about something without a word being spoken. The chief nodded.
“Chief, you have the conn,” Cowlings finally ordered. He motioned to Forsythe. “Captain’s cabin.”
Forsythe knew a moment of shock. Underway, the officer of the deck belonged in Maneuvering, right there, supervising the conning officer and other watch stations. Cowlings was only five steps away, since the captain’s cabin was located immediately behind maneuvering, but even that small distance amounted to heresy.
As though reading his mind, Cowlings grimaced. “It’s the least of the compromises we’re going to be making at this point. We need to talk. I’m keeping the deck because I don’t want him solely responsible if something goes wrong.”
Once they stepped in the captain’s cabin, all the energy seemed to drain out of Cowlings. He slumped down in the captain’s chair, boneless, and seemed to have barely enough energy to point at the captain’s couch. Forsythe took a seat, remembering not so long ago when they had been in the same positions in the engineer’s stateroom.
“So. Here we are.” Cowlings took a deep breath, and shook his head, as though unable to believe what they’d done. He closed his eyes for a moment, rolled his neck to loosen the shoulder muscles, and then rubbed his temples with his fingertips. With his eyes still closed, he said, “Good call, getting them moving immediately on the mooring lines. I’m not sure we would have made it otherwise.”
“Are we in a lot of trouble?” Forsythe asked hesitantly. “I mean, I’ve never heard of this being done before.”
“Neither have I. Not since Pearl Harbor. But there’s no point in second-guessing that now. Under the circumstances, I did what I thought was necessary to protect the ship.”
“We did,” Forsythe said firmly.
Cowlings shook his head. “It doesn’t work that way.” He finally opened his eyes and stared directly at Forsythe. “I was the command duty officer and I’m the one qualified as officer of the deck underway. Whatever else happens, you are in no way responsible for that decision.” He held up one hand to forestall comment. “Don’t get me wrong. We have to stand together on this, at least in front of the crew, and I appreciate the fact that you understand that. But let’s get it straight between the two of us. It was my decision, and I will take sole responsibility for it.”