'Yes, ma'am. Please, sit down. Can I get you anything?' he asked urgently.
'I've set your daughter up with a doctor at Pitt. Her name's Michelle Bryant. She's a psychiatrist -'
'You mean Doris is... sick?'
Sarah shook her head. 'No, not really. But she's been through a very bad time, and good medical attention will help her recover a lot faster. Do you understand?'
"Doc, I will do anything you tell me, okay? I've got all the medical insurance I need through my company.'
'Don't worry about that. Michelle will handle this as a matter of professional courtesy. You have to go there with Doris. Now, it is very important that you understand, she's been through a really horrible experience. Terrible things. She's going to get better - she's going to recover fully, but you have to do your part. Michelle can explain all that better than I can. What I'm telling you, Mr Brown, is this: no matter what awful things you learn, please -'
'Doc,' he interrupted softly, 'that's my little girl. She's all I have, and I'm not going to... foul up and lose her again. I'd rather die.'
'Mr Brown, that is exactly what we needed to hear.'
Kelly awoke at one in the morning, local time. The big slug of whiskey he'd downed along the way had blessedly not resulted in a hangover. In fact, he felt unusually rested. The gentle rocking of the ship had soothed his body during the day/night, and lying in the darkness of his officers' accommodations he heard the gentle creaks of steel compressing and expanding as USS Ogden turned to port. He made his way to the shower, using cold water to wake himself up. In ten minutes he was dressed and presentable. It was time to explore the ship.
Warships never sleep. Though most work details were synchronized to daylight hours, the unbending watch cycle of the Navy meant that men were always moving about. No less than a hundred of the ship's crew were always at their duty stations, and many others were circulating about the dimly lit passageways on their way to minor maintenance tasks. Others were lounging in the mess spaces, catching up on reading or letter-writing.
He was dressed in striped fatigues. There was a name tag that said Clark, but no badges of rank. In the eyes of the crew that made 'Mr Clark' a civilian, and already they were whispering that he was a CIA guy - to the natural accompaniment of James Bond jokes that evaporated on the sight of him. The sailors stood aside in the passageways as he wandered around, greeting him with respectful nods that he acknowledged, bemused to have officer status. Though only the Captain and Executive Officer knew what this mission was all about, the sailors weren't dumb. You didn't send a ship all the way from 'Dago just to support a short platoon of Marines unless there was one hell of a good reason, and the bad-ass bunch that had come aboard looked like the sort to make John Wayne take a respectful step back.
??ll? found the flight deck. Three sailors were walking there, too. Connie was still on the horizon, still operating aircraft whose strobes blinked away against the stars. In a few minutes his eyes adapted to the darkness. There were destroyers present, a few thousand yards out. Aloft on Ogden, radar antennas turned to the hum of electric motors, but the dominating sound was the continuous broomlike swish of steel hull parting water.
'Jesus, it's pretty,' he said, mainly to himself. Kelly headed back into the superstructure and wandered forward and upwards until he found the Combat Information Center. Captain Franks was there, sleepless, as many captains tended to be.
'Feeling better?' the CO asked.
'Yes, sir.' Kelly looked down at the plot, counting the ships in this formation, designated TF-77.1. Lots of radars were up and running, because North Vietnam had an air force and might someday try to do something really dumb.
'Which one's the AGI?'
'This is our Russian friend.' Franks tapped the main display. 'Doing the same thing we are. The Elint guys we have embarked are having a fine old time,' the Captain went on. 'Normally they go out on little ships. We're like the Queen Mary for them.'
'Pretty big,' Kelly agreed. 'Seems real empty, too.'
'Yep. Well, no scuffles to worry about, 'tween my kids and the Marine kids, I mean. You need to look at some charts? I have the whole package under lock in my cabin.'
'Sounds like a good idea, Cap'n. Maybe some coffee, too?'
Franks' at-sea cabin was comfortable enough. A steward brought coffee and breakfast. Kelly unfolded the chart, again examining the river he'd be taking up.
'Nice and deep,' Franks observed.
'As far as I need it to be,' Kelly agreed, munching on some toast. 'The objective's right here.'
'Better you than me, my friend.' Franks pulled a pair of dividers out of his pocket and walked off the distance.
'How long you been in this business?'
'Gator navy?' Franks laughed. 'Well, they kicked my ass out of Annapolis in two and a half years. I wanted destroyers, so they gave me a first-sight LST. XO as a jaygee, would you believe? First landing was Pelileu. I had my own command for Okinawa. Then Inchon, Wonsan, Lebanon. I've scraped off a lot of paint on a lot of beaches. You think...?' he asked, looking up.
'We're not here to fail, Captain.' Kelly had every twist of the river committed to memory, yet he continued to look at the chart, an exact copy of the one he'd studied at Quantico, looking for something new, finding nothing. He continued to stare at it anyway.
'You're going in alone? Long swim, Mr Clark,' Franks observed.
'I'll have some help, and I don't have to swim back, do I?'
'I suppose not. Sure will be nice to get those guys out.
'Yes, sir.'
CHAPTER 27
Insertion
Phase One of Operation boxwood green began just before dawn. The carrier USS Constellation reversed her southerly course at the transmission of a single code word. Two cruisers and six destroyers matched her turn to port, and the handles on nine different sets of engine-room enunciators were pushed down to the full setting. All of the various ship's boilers were fully on line already, and as the warships heeled to starboard, they also started accelerating. The maneuver caught the Russian AGI crew by surprise. They'd expected Connie to turn the other way, into the wind to commence flight operations, but unknown to them the carrier was standing down this morning and racing northeast. The intelligence-gathering trawler also altered course, increasing power on her own in the vain hope of soon catching up with the carrier task force. That left Ogden with two Adams-class missile-destroyer escorts, a sensible precaution after what had so recently happened to USS Pueblo off the Korean coast.
Captain Franks watched the Russian ship disappear an hour later. Two more hours passed, just to be sure. At eight that morning a pair of AH-1 Huey Cobras completed their lonely overwater flight from the Marine air base at Danang, landing on Ogden's ample flight deck. The Russians might have wondered about the presence of two attack helicopters on the ship which, their intelligence reports confidently told them, was on an electronic-intelligence mission not unlike their own. Maintenance men already aboard immediately wheeled the 'snakes' to a sheltered spot and began a complete maintenance check which would verify the condition of every component. Members of Ogden's crew lit up their own machine shop, and skilled chief machinist's mates offered everything they had to the new arrivals. They were still not briefed on the mission, but it was clear now that something most unusual indeed was under way. The time for questioning was over. Whatever the hell it was, every resource of their ship was made available even before officers troubled themselves to relay that order to their various divisions. Cobra gunships meant action, and every man aboard knew they were a hell of a lot closer to North Vietnam than South. Speculation was running wild, but not that wild. They had a spook team aboard, then Marines, now gunships, and more helicopters would land this afternoon. The Navy medical corpsmen aboard were told to open up the ship's hospital spaces for new arrivals.