“Our guys’ll be wiped out,” said the RIO.
“Quite possible,” shrugged Shirer, “but it’ll probably buy time. That’s what it’s all about. Anyway, we can give ‘em support. We can make a difference.”
“Jesus,” said another pilot, opening a well-thumbed issue of People Today, flown in with fleet mail the evening before. “Those poor bastards on the Blaine.” The pilot showed the color shots of the frigate in Nagasaki and the wounded being unloaded from hospital planes in San Diego after the flight from Tokyo.
“Old man alive?” asked another pilot.
“Stateside,” said the pilot reading the magazine. “Burned up pretty badly, according to this. Interviews some of his family. Hey — says here his old man was in the navy. Admiral. Brother’s on an SSN.”
An RIO was looking over the pilot’s shoulder. “Who’s the broad?”
“His sister.”
“Man, look at this. Would I like to get into her pants.”
Shirer glimpsed the photo and held his hand out for the magazine. It looked like her, the girl he’d met at a Washington ball-some military outfit had put it on. He couldn’t remember her last name, though, or whether she’d said she had a brother on a U.S. frigate. Taking the magazine, he looked at the photo more closely. It was her. Hair all different — a more sophisticated look than he remembered. The caption said, “Mrs. La Roche.”
For a moment he was back with her. It had been one of the gentler nights. She was beautiful and shy and not sure whether she wanted to do it or not, but along with the shyness there was a grabbing hunger, as if she couldn’t wait, wanting love but afraid, holding back. Then she got all serious and he had her. She’d closed her eyes, sighing deeply when he kissed her, shivering with excitement and fear at the same time — and need. He’d been as tender as he could, but it wasn’t very good. It had soon become evident to Shirer that it was her first time and it had turned into a production, her grimacing, trying not to show the pain but clearly hurting like hell. He’d eased off and she’d been sorry, apologetic — how she hadn’t been fair to him — how she felt like a slut. He tried fooling around a bit to lighten her up for a repeat run, but she’d almost freaked out when he’d put on the patch. They’d gone out a few more times, but it didn’t seem to work. She was too highly strung anyway — beautiful and innocent, but her sensitivity was too fragile for him to handle. Now, from the photos at least, it looked like she’d had a bit more experience, knew who she was, what she wanted. She’d be great.
“Who’s this La Roche joker?” he asked, glancing through the article.
“Her husband. Some cosmetic poof.”
“Well—” Shirer answered. “That’s that.”
“What d’you mean?” asked his RIO.
Shirer handed back the magazine. “I mean that’s it for the skipper of that frigate.”
“Oh, yeah,” answered the RIO. “Yes, sir, he’s down the toilet.”
Shirer was sitting back in the high-backed pilot’s seat, trying to remember the last time he’d had a woman. Felt a hard-on coming. Tried to put her out of his mind, but something about it bothered him. Completely irrational, he told himself, but somehow he felt as if she should have told him when she’d decided to get married. But why should she? A short, brief fling.
“Man,” said another navigator. “She could sit on my face anytime. Anywhere.”
“Look at the board,” said Shirer, nodding toward the TV monitors. Visibility had been cut to near zero about the carrier, one of the things that really spooked the pilots, though they would never admit it. The carrier was no bigger than a postage stamp when you were coming in to hook the wire at several hundred miles an hour. It was nerve-racking enough when you could see.
“You’d better get your minds out of your shorts,” advised Shirer. “And think about Charlie. Now he’s got two things going for him — distance and heavy cloud cover.” He turned to another pilot. “Fisher, that drop tank of yours. Got the release fixed?”
“Yes, sir.”
“Good.”
The briefing officer came in. They stood up and he immediately waved for them to sit down.
“It’s still on for tomorrow morning. We’ll be riding shotgun for the choppers and Prowlers and the Hercules. Drop tanks to give us extra time for strafing and rocket attacks.”
The RIO called Fisher leaned over to his Tomcat’s navigator. “How the hell did One-Eyed Jack know we’d be using drop tanks?”
The navigator shrugged. It meant that they were going in deep. A long way inland.
“Target, sir?”
“You’ll be told later, Fisher. Meanwhile I suggest you get some rest.”
“With this noise?” someone asked.
As the ready room emptied, Fisher turned to Major Shirer. “Sir? How’d you know about the drop tanks?”
Shirer looked around so as none of the others could hear. “I have the knowledge, Fisher,” he said, tapping his head. “Know what I mean?”
CHAPTER FORTY-THREE
In Western France, autumn cast a russet spell over the countryside, and poplars were turning half-golden in the breeze, the only sign of war being increased traffic on the road to Coquettes as apprehensive Frenchmen began lining up for hours, waiting their turn in the creeping traffic line heading for England. They were not going by roll-on, roll-off ferries, as these had been stopped two days ago when an East German fighter, out of control over Holland, had plummeted into the channel midway between Dover and Calais. There were no injuries, the pilot picked up by the Calais-to-Dover hovercraft. He was not popular, however, and was roundly booed in several tongues as, dripping wet, he was fished out of the frigid water and taken to the bridge for safety’s sake. Sitting wrapped in British Sea Link blankets, he was a forlorn figure, torn between gratitude for the British having picked him up and anxiety about what would happen to him later on.
The London tabloids gave prominence to the fighter “attack.” Overnight the ferry traffic from France dropped away to a trickle. Now the twin twenty-five-foot-diameter undersea tunnels of the “Chunnel” through which rail-borne cars, passengers, and freight trucks moved under the channel from Coquelles outside Calais to Cheriton outside Folkestone, a distance of thirty miles, became the preferred way of crossing.
It was shortly after 10:00 a.m. the following day at Cheriton when a lorry driver, having to leave his truck on the rail wagon because of a false fire alarm, arrived in a foul mood at the Cheriton terminal. Agitated and mumbling to himself after having to walk three hundred meters from inside the Chunnel, he complained bitterly to the British Eurotunnel public relations officer on duty. This was the third time, the lorry driver told the official, that there’d been a false fire alarm. In addition, he protested that when he tried to call London on one of the emergency phones inside the Chunnel, to tell his employer that he’d be late, “the bloody thing wouldn’t work.” He’d been jinxed, he told them, by inefficiency. At the beginning of his journey in France his truck had broken down and he’d been cursed “to Kingdom Come” by damned Frogs who were backed up behind him. And when he’d tried to get help, there was no one available at the French terminal. If Eurotunnel couldn’t keep the phones working, he charged, and provide assistance when needed, then they shouldn’t have built the bloody Chunnel in the first place.
The British public relations officer did not handle the criticism well, insinuating that perhaps the truck shouldn’t have been on the road in the first place if it was “mechanically unsound.” This infuriated the driver, and the official didn’t improve matters by grudgingly telling the driver he could use the office phone but would have to pay for any “trunk”—long distance — call to London. The driver stormed off, saying that he wouldn’t use Eurotunnel’s damn phone, and was last seen hailing a taxi.