“Hey, don’t look so glum. I’m on your side, remember? Milly and I had a good talk. I learned a lot from that lady. I got some of my priorities straightened out. I’ve been thinking too much about me, me, me. I was making it ninety percent me and ten percent Navy.”
“But what about-“
She cut him off with a finger over his lips.
“Hey, let me finish. I’d be thrilled pink and purple if you would come to D.C. in some Navy capacity. That just isn’t going to happen, not right away at least. You turned down that aide spot to the CNO.
Gutsy.”
She paused and kissed him on the lips, then pulled away.
“I figure the kind of work you’re doing will have active-duty time of about four years. You’ve done two, that leaves two more. The CIA people say the average length of service of their field agents during the peak of the Cold War was about four years. Same here.
“Now, I think that you and I are smart enough to arrange things so we can have the best of both worlds. Between or after missions, you’ll get some leave time and can come to D.C. Now and then, I can slip away for a week or two out here — say, every two months or so. That kind of an arrangement I can live with. What do you think?”
Murdock grinned, and put his arms around her. He kissed her with clear intent. She edged away.
“Really, what do you think of my suggestion?”
“I think it’s a great idea. I also think that State should have you in the Middle East negotiating that Arab-Israeli thing. It would be settled in two weeks flat.”
She laughed, and kissed him again.
“I think that was a yes,” she said. “Now, as in any serious negotiations, we must seal the bargain. I think the bedroom is over there.”
Murdock led the way. It was the best negotiations he’d been in for a long time, and the bargain-sealing lasted half the night.
The next three days flashed by so fast Murdock hardly remembered what training he and the SEALs went through. When the morning came for their departure, he had come in an hour late after a long good-bye with Ardith.
“I don’t want you to go, but as a good Navy woman, I won’t tell you that,” she’d said. “I’ll smile, and kiss you good-bye, and cry on my own damn time.”
He’d kissed her again, put her in a cab for the airport, and driven his Bronco to the SEALs parking lot outside the quarterdeck. It was time.
It was a bare-bones trip. Each man took only his issue weapon and alternates, but no ammunition. They had their combat vests and rebreathers, but no IBS — Inflatable Boat Small — or any grenades.
“I’m not sure how long it will take us to get there,” Murdock said.
“The Pacific is a big ocean, but there doesn’t seem to be any hurry-up on this trip. We might even get fed on the way. We’ll take along two MREs per man just in case. Any questions?”
“This floating bathtub will have everything we need if we get a hot call?” Jaybird asked.
“If they don’t when we get there, I’ll requisition it and have a COD fly it on board. The Monroe should have everything we need.”
When they got to North Island Naval Air Station two miles through Coronado, they found a Gulfstream II jet waiting for them. The slightly modified large executive jet could take nineteen passengers.
It carried a Navy crew of three, and had a maximum ceiling of 42,000 feet and a top cruise speed of 581 miles an hour. The maximum range was 3,275 miles. Murdock figured they might make three stops: Honolulu, Wake Island, and Tokyo. He didn’t even know if the U.S. had an airfield at Wake Island anymore.
Murdock looked over the craft as they waited to board. The low wing had a 25-degree leading-edge sweep, a 3-degree dihedral from the roots, and low wing fences at midspan.
The trailing edge showed one-piece, and single-slotted, Fowler flaps inboard of the inset ailerons.
The T-shaped tail had a broad, shallowly swept vertical fin with a small dorsal fillet and full-height rudder. On the top of the tail were swept, horizontal stabilizers with full-span elevators.
He knew it had dual Rolls-Royce turbofan engines with Rohr thrust reversers mounted on short stubs located high on the rear fuselage. It used wing tanks for fuel storage. The entry door was on the forward left side between the flight deck and the passengers’ cabin. There were five oval porthole windows on each side of the fuselage.
He decided it would do. Better than a lumbering C-130 for the long flight. He figured the food service would be lousy.
A few minutes later, they climbed on board, stowed their vests and weapons, and settled down into real commercial-airliner-type seats for the ride. Everyone was safely on board when a crew chief checked them and nodded. A moment later a blue-clad woman came out of the flight deck and watched them for a minute.
“Oh, stewardess,” a SEAL voice called.
The woman smiled, and turned so they could see the railroad tracks of a full lieutenant on her collar. She was grinning.
“An easy mistake to make, sailor, but don’t do it again. I’m Lieutenant Frazier, and I’m your pilot on this milk run. We’ll stop in Honolulu for you to stretch your legs and fill your stomachs. I hope you have a good flight.”
11
Murdock and his platoon settled into quarters on board the big aircraft carrier as it plowed north in moderate seas toward the Tsugaru Strait between the northern Japanese Island of Hokkaido and the big island of Honshu.
The jet had made three stops. Then, at a field near Tokyo, a COD had lifted them off the ground, and put them down on a pitching deck in choppy seas on board the carrier working north along the Japanese coast.
It had been a good ride.
The carrier had been off Sendai steaming south when word came from CINCPAC to reverse directions. The quickest way to North Korea lay through the Tsugaru Strait between Honshu and Hokkaido, rather than going all the way down and around Honshu, and maybe even Kyushu, before turning north six hundred miles to come close to North Korea.
Stroh had sent them a packet of material giving background on the Korean situation, what the North had been doing, and how the U.S. and the South Koreans had responded. It didn’t look good to Murdock. He had never trusted the North Koreans; now it looked like they were about to make good on an oft-threatened drive to unify the peninsula.
Once on board, Murdock and Jaybird worked with their carrier liaison, Lieutenant Commander Boliling, to draw the ammunition, additional weapons, and supplies that they wanted to have on hand for immediate selection in case they were alerted for a definite mission.
They brought in four IBSS, and left them as uninflated as they could be. Jaybird had his lists and requisition forms. He ordered wet suits for each man, extra cammies, a second SATCOM radio as a backup, and a hundred other items that the platoon might need if, or when, it went into action.
Murdock went to the wardroom, found an unused phone tap, and plugged in his laptop computer to send an E-mail to Master Chief Mackenzie back in Coronado.
“Master Chief Mackenzie. Request an E-mail report to Murdocsealussmonroe. Navy. mil. Will check my E-mail daily until we move into action. So far Mahanani is working well with the platoon.” He had no unread mail, so he closed up and went back to his quarters.
The weird time change hit the platoon hard. They had crossed the International Date Line, and automatically they were about a day ahead.
Not a whole day, but enough to ruin their sleep pattern for a day or two.
By the third day nothing new had come over Murdock’s E-mail. They were back on schedule by then, and Murdock got the SEALs to an area they were assigned to on deck for PT and jogging. Murdock never got tired of watching the catapults throw the 74,000-pound Tomcats into the air.