Mrs. Nettles was about to say something else, but the young lieutenant had already sprinted halfway down the companionway and into a stairwell.
“Sir!” Kopelman said, bursting onto the bridge deck.
“What have you got, Lieutenant?” Admiral Howell said, studying his face. “Tell me it’s good news, son. We’ve got about ten minutes till all hell breaks loose.”
“I spoke with Mrs. Nettles and her daughter. The bear is with Captain Charles Nettles, sir. He took it along on his mission.”
“He’s got the fucking bear in his cockpit?”
“I believe he does, yes, sir.”
“Are you dead certain about this, son?”
“Aye, aye, sir, as certain as I can be.”
Howell punched a button on the bridge console.
“This is Admiral Howell speaking. Where the fuck is Captain Charles Nettles?”
“Captain Nettles is on final, sir, about ten seconds from touch-down,” the airboss said.
“Christ! Wave him off, goddammit, wave him off!”
Howell walked outside onto the port bridge-wing and looked astern. He could see all the Black Aces were home, save one. Captain Nettles’s F-14 Tomcat was just off Big John’s stern, flared up, seconds from landing.
The orange jackets were out there, the FSO trying to wave off the fighter. It was too late.
“Lieutenant,” Howell said, his voice dead calm. “Would you just go on down to Captain Nettles’s cabin and just make sure he didn’t leave that goddamn bear there? Is that a good idea?”
“Aye, aye, sir!” Kopelman said, and left the bridge-wing at a dead run.
“He’s got his tailhook down, goddammit!” Howell screamed into the mike on the outside console.
“It’s jammed, Admiral,” the airboss said over the speaker.
“Drop the fucking wire! Have him go to full power! Now!”
“Zulu Bravo Leader go to full power! Bolter! Bolter!” they heard the airboss shout.
There was a howl of turbine whine as the F-14’s twin turbofan engines instantly spooled up, both afterburners spouting licks of red-orange and yellow flame as she roared past the bridge, accelerating.
“Go…go…go!” the airboss said as the big fighter rolled and finally lifted off the end of the deck. It immediately dropped, dipped perilously close to the wavetops, then started a climb out.
“Somebody want to tell me what the fuckin’ tarnation is going on around here?” said Captain Nettles over the speaker.
“This is Admiral Howell, Captain. How you doin’, Chuck?”
“Ah, roger that, pardon my French, Admiral.”
“Captain, at the risk of sounding like a complete goddamn moron, let me ask you a question.”
“Shoot, sir.”
“Do you happen to have a white teddy bear in that aircraft, son?”
“Uh…well, as a matter of fact, I do, Admiral.”
“You have no idea how happy that makes me, Captain.”
“I’m sorry, Admiral, I’m afraid I don’t—”
Lieutenant Kopelman appeared at that moment, completely winded, and said, “No bear in his quarters, sir. I turned it upside down!”
“How much time we got left, Lieutenant?” the admiral asked, raising his binoculars to his eyes and tracking the jet fighter.
Kopelman looked at his watch. “A minute, thirty-two seconds, sir!”
“Good, good,” Howell said, then, into the mike, “Chuck, you’re going to need to deep-six that bear, son. Like, right now.”
“Sorry, sir?”
“The bear has a weapon in it, son, and it’s going to explode in about a minute. Maybe less. Okay? So just take her easy, level off, and reduce your airspeed immediately, you copy that?”
“Copy” was the terse one-word answer.
“Okay, you’re looking good, Zulu Bravo. I have you in visual contact. Now, I want you to jettison your canopy.”
“Roger that.”
The canopy blew off instantly, exposing the pilot and his radar intercept officer seated immediately aft of him to a hundred-knot-plus blast of air. Chuck Nettles felt a shuddering bump and the plane instantly started to yaw left and right.
“I think the canopy clipped the starboard rudder, sir!”
“Yes, it did, Chuck, I saw that. Took out a good-sized chunk. Big old piece. But you’ve got a more immediate problem. Can you reach that bear?”
“Yes, sir.”
“You’ve got exactly ten seconds to get that bear out of your plane, son.”
Admiral Howell waited, tracking his binocs right with the streaking fighter, holding his breath as if that would keep his heart in place. A smile broke across his face.
A small white object flew out of the cockpit, hit the jetstream, and was blasted backwards and down.
He stayed with the bear all the way, saw it hit the water. For a few endless moments, he thought the goddamn thing might float, but a smile broke across his face as he saw the bear slip beneath the waves.
So much for your goddamn airborne spores, amigos.
The density of the ocean had instantly neutered the Cubans’ weapon.
There was a squawk over the speaker.
“Uh, I’m having a little trouble keeping this bird flying straight,” Nettles said over the speaker. “Busted rudder and all. Anybody got any bright ideas?”
“I’ve had all the good ideas I’m going to have this morning, Chuck. You just saved a lot of lives. I want to thank you for that. I’m going to turn you over to the airboss now. You just bring that big sucker on home, son. Bring her down safely. There’ll be a fifth of George Dickel with your name on it waiting in my wardroom.”
“Copy that,” Captain Nettles said, trying desperately not to let the effect of the blown canopy, destroyed rudder, and the fact that he’d just flown an entire mission with a bomb between his knees show in his voice.
“Bravo Zulu, you are a quarter mile out,” the airboss said. “Turn right to 060 degrees.”
“I can’t do that, she’s not responding to rudder.”
“Well, you’re going to have to land that bird with ailerons and elevators, Bravo Zulu, just like you did out at Coronado in flying school.”
“I can’t remember back that far, sir.”
“Bravo Zulu, you play a little golf, don’t you?”
“Affirmative.”
“Slice or hook?”
“Slice a little.”
“Know how you aim a teensy bit left to correct for that slice?”
“Affirmative.”
“You got a little slice in your current stance. I want you shift your aim left, copy?”
“Left.”
“Easy, easy. Not that much, boy. A teensy. You want to draw it in down the left side of the fairway.”
“How’s that?”
“Call the ball, Bravo Zulu.”
“I have the ball, sir.”
“Come on home, then, Bravo Zulu. Come on home to Papa John.”
59
The third-story sitting room of the old house in Belgrave Square was lit only by a roaring fire. Pelting rain beat against the room’s tall, broad windows. The upper branches of the plane and elm trees outside, dancing violently in the howling wind, clawed and scratched at the glass.
It was a cold, sleeting rain, but the roaring fire Pelham had laid in the great hearth warmed the room and kept the chill of late evening at bay.
Savage filaments of lightning briefly illuminated the whole room, where two people sat side by side on an immense sofa before a crackling blaze. The lightning was followed immediately by an earth-splitting thunderclap powerful enough, it seemed, to shake a good portion of London to its ancient foundations. In the silence that followed, the woman rested her head on the man’s shoulder and spoke in a quiet, sleepy voice.
“My daddy used to say that all the great romances are made in heaven. But so are thunder and lightning.”