“Why?” Jake asked.
“That was my question. I’ll level with you, Jake. I was twenty-two years old and I’d never met anybody in my life who wasn’t in it for himself. So I asked.
“Horowitz thought about it for a little bit and finally said he guessed I was entitled to know. The Nazis castrated him. He could never have any children. When he got out of Dachau after the war weighing ninety-one pounds, he came to America. He wanted his life to make a difference to somebody, he said, so he promised to send a hundred kids to college, blacks and Puerto Ricans who would never have a chance otherwise. He worked three jobs, seven days a week, saved his money, invested every dime. And he did it. Actually sent thirty-two, who were all of the hundred that finished high school and could read and write well enough to get into a college. Thirty-two. He paid board, room, books and tuition and sent a little allowance every month. Twenty-three of us graduated.”
Flap tossed off the last of the liquor and set the glass in the small metal sink jutting out from the wall.
“I thought long and hard about the interview. I decided I wanted my life to make a difference, to make Horowitz’s life make a difference…you see what I mean. But I’m not Solomon Horowitz. All I knew how to do was drink, screw, do burglaries and fight. I wasn’t so good at stealing cars — I got caught a lot. So I picked the fìghtin’est outfit of them all and joined up.
“They wouldn’t send me to officer candidate school because of my record. I enlisted anyway. I was full of Horowitz’s fire. I went to boot camp and finished first in my class, went to mortar school and came out first, so they made me an instructor. Got to be a pretty fair hand with a mortar and a rifle and led PT classes in my spare time. Finally they decided I might make a Marine after all, so they sent me to OCS.”
“How did you do there?” Jake asked, even though he thought he knew the answer.
“Number one,” Le Beau said flatly, without inflection. “They gave me a presentation sword.”
“Going to stay in?”
“There’s nothing for me in Brooklyn. My mother died of a drug overdose years ago. I’ve been in ten years now and I’m staying until they kick me out. The Corps is my home.”
“Don’t you get tired of it sometimes?”
“Sometimes. Then I remember Horowitz and I’m not tired anymore. I’ve got his picture. Want to see it?” The Marine dug out his wallet.
Jake looked. Flap towered over Horowitz — a younger Flap togged out in the white dress uniform of a Marine officer. The old, old man had wispy white hair and stooped shoulders. His head was turned and he was looking up into the beaming face of the handsome black man. They were smiling at each other.
“Horowitz came to Parris Island for the graduation ceremony,” Flap explained. “They gave me the sword and I walked over to where he was sitting and gave it to him.”
“He still alive?”
“Oh no. He died six months after this picture was taken. This is the only one of him I have.”
After Flap left, Jake slowly unlaced his flight boots and pulled them off. It took the last of his energy.
If the whole cruise goes like this day has, I’m not going to make it. Russian frigates, in-flight engagements…Jesus!
He eyed his bunk, the top one, and worked himself up to an effort. He didn’t even pull off his flight suit. Sixty seconds after his head hit the pillow he was asleep.
6
The ships sailed across a restless, empty ocean. Jake saw no ships other than those of the task group whenever he went on deck, which he managed to do three or four times a day. Many sailors never went topside; they spent every minute of their day in their working spaces, their berthing areas, or on the mess deck, and saw sunlight only when the ship pulled into port. Jake Grafton thought he would go stir-crazy if he couldn’t see the sea and sky and feel the wind on his face every few hours.
He would stroll around the deck, visit with Bosun Muldowski if he ran into him, chat with the catapult crews if they were on deck, and examine planes. His eyes seemed naturally drawn to airplanes. His destination on these excursions was usually the forward end of the flight deck, where he would stand between the catapults looking at the ocean. The wind was usually vigorous here. It played with his hair and tugged at his clothes and cleaned the below-decks smells from his nostrils.
The first morning he saw a school of whales to starboard. Knots of sailors gawked and pointed. The whales spouted occasionally and once one came soaring out of the water, then crashed down in a magnificent cloud of spray. Mostly the view was of black backs glistening amid the swells.
When he went below this first morning at sea, reentered the world of crowded passageways, tiny offices, and never-ending paperwork, the squadron maintenance officer cornered him. “That plane you flew last night — well, we haven’t found any airframe damage yet. Maybe we dodged the bullet.” If there was no damage there would be no official report assessing blame. “The avionics took a helluva lot bigger lick than they’re designed for, though. Radar and computer and VDI are screwed up.”
Jake threw himself into the problem assigned to him by Colonel Haldane. How would you attack a Soviet ship? Since the Soviets had all kinds of ships, he soon focused on the most capable, the guided missile cruisers that were the mainstay of their task forces, Kyndas and Krestas. After preliminary research of classified material in the Air Intelligence spaces, he paid a visit to the EA-6B Prowler squadron in their small ready room on the 0–3 level, near the number-four arresting gear room.
This squadron had only four aircraft, but they were Cadillacs. A stretched version of the A-6, the Prowler held a crew of four: one pilot and three electronic warfare specialists. The airplane’s sole mission was to foil enemy radars. The electronic devices it used for this task were mounted in pods slung on the weapons stations. Other than the pilot’s instruments, the panels of the cockpit were devoted to the displays and controls necessary to detect enemy radar transmissions and render the information they gave the enemy useless. Since it was a highly modified version of the A-6, the plane was popularly referred to as a Queer Six.
The Prowler crews in Ready Eight greeted Jake with open arms. They too were stationed on Whidbey Island when ashore, and two or three of the officers knew Jake. When he finally got around to explaining his errand, they were delighted to help. The capabilities of Soviet warships were their stock in trade.
Jake had already known that Soviet ships were heavily armed, but now he found out just how formidable they really were. Radar capabilities were evaluated, weapons envelopes examined. Finally Jake Grafton gave his conclusion: “A single plane doesn’t have much of a chance against one of these ships.” This comment drew sober nods from the two electronic warfare experts at his elbows.
Nor, he soon concluded, did a flight of planes have much of a chance if the weapons they had to use were free-falling bombs, technology left over from World War II. Oh, free-falling bombs had been adequate in Vietnam when attacking stationary targets ashore — barely adequate — but modern warships were another matter entirely. Ships would detect the aircraft on radar while they were still minutes away. Radar would allow antiaircraft missiles to be fired and guided long before the attacker reached the immediate vicinity of the ship. Then, in-close, radar-directed guns would pour forth a river of high explosives.
If our lucky attack pilot survived all that, he was ready to aim his free-fall weapons at a maneuvering, high-speed target. Even if he aimed his bombs perfectly, the bombs were un-guided during their eight to ten seconds of fall, so if the ship’s captain reversed the helm or tightened a turn, or if the pilot had miscalculated the wind, the bombs would miss.