Charles Taylor - First Salvo

“I’d say a snatch like that is impossible,” Nellie remarked blandly.

Carleton looked over at him and nodded in agreement. “Me, too.”

“The president says it is, too. But he asked me what the next step would be if we stopped the subs up north, and if we held our own in the Med. I told him frankly that the Russian doctrine calls for nuclear weapons. First, they’ll call our bluff, then they’ll threaten, and then they’ll use them to show they mean business.” Cobb said nothing.

“Who came up with this brilliant idea?” Ryng asked sarcastically. Then he added, “Been nice knowing you, Hank.”

“I have no idea. The day after we talked about the nuclear threat, he asked me if I thought grabbing this guy — Keradin his name is — would stop them long enough to think. I said that it might be a better idea to take him out. The president looked at me, you know, over the tops of his glasses, and said that was his feeling precisely. But the others arguing that morning thought that murdering the guy would make them so mad they’d just blast away.” Pratt stopped for a moment and scratched the back of his neck. “But the more we talked about it, the better the idea of kidnapping sounded. You know,” he leaned forward, “it might just put them off guard long enough to make them think. But first we’d have to neutralize them up north and in the Med.” He got up and shrugged. “Anyway, the president was looking for the best man for the job.” Pratt pointed at Cobb. “He’d heard Hank’s name before, so I reinforced what he already knew.”

“It’s still impossible,” Carleton said softly.

“Well,” Cobb clapped his hands, “we’ll never know until we try it, will we?”

There was no point, Pratt realized, in going over any more details of why Cobb would make this attempt. Dave Pratt had agreed because some of the studies justifying the idea stemmed from his own — that the organization controlling the Soviet ICBM arsenal might be weakened to the point of indecision if their commander was neutralized. Pratt had once emphasized three goals concerning the Strategic Rocket Forces: create confusion and vacillation within a system that relied upon one man; determine primary Soviet targets before they could make their initial launch, thereby instilling the threat of complete failure; and create disaffection within the Soviet high command based on the premise that their strategic system might have been compromised. Even if the kidnapping was near inconceivable, it was in Cobb’s hands now.

For the next two hours, the conversation often returned to the days along the Mekong. Pratt had been a lieutenant commander in charge of the riverboat squadron; Carleton, just promoted to lieutenant, was his executive officer. Nelson and Ryng were both young ensigns, and Henry Cobb had been a petty officer in charge of one of the boats.

One of their final operations brought them closer to each other than ever. It was a raid deep into VC territory. Nelson and Ryng each led a division of boats; Pratt and Carleton directed the operation by helicopter. Ryng, his boat sunk in one of the early firefights, was pulled from the muddy water by Nelson. The boats continued upriver into a second, heavier action. This time the helo was shot down, crashing in the water near the river’s edge. Carleton was thrown free of the wreckage as it hit the water. Hank Cobb, disregarding heavy fire from shore, leaped into the water, diving into the sinking wreckage to pull out Pratt.

The depleted squadron was attacked two more times as it retreated downriver. The final firefight sank Nelson’s boat. The five men, injured now, were the only ones to survive. Somehow each helped the other through a week in the jungle. When Pratt could go no farther, Cobb and Nelson continued ahead and located a friendly village. Two days later they were rescued.

There was only one other event, a tragic one, that had united them even more. Henry Cobb had fallen in love with a Vietnamese girl. Unfortunately, they would later learn, she had once worked for the Viet Cong. She tried to escape them when she married Cobb. When the VC tortured her to death for falling in love with an American, they took turns caring for Cobb until he got hold of himself. Then, when they were sure he was once again himself, Ryng had gone with Cobb to where the girl’s VC cell was located. The Saigon police counted twenty-two bodies the next day. After that, those in the group never mentioned her again, and Cobb never again, to their knowledge, became involved with a woman. It was his way.

At two p.m. the tray of sandwiches Pratt had ordered beforehand appeared. Half an hour later, Admiral Pratt called for his car to take four of them out to Andrews to catch their flight to Europe. Ryng would travel separately with his own team.

They shook hands on the steps near the front entrance of the hotel, knowing it might be years before they found themselves in the same town again. Admiral Pratt’s car arrived, then went to wait discreetly at the corner, a hundred feet from the hotel’s front door. The driver, a young sailor immaculate in fresh whites, stood patiently beside the vehicle.

Ryng was the only one who saw a delivery truck change lanes too quickly. It was then hit from the rear and knocked toward Pratt’s car. The best Ryng could tell, the driver of the delivery truck probably stepped on the gas rather than the brake. It hit the Navy vehicle with tremendous force.

The explosion that followed was incredible, the thunderclap literally knocking the wind out of Ryng as he sprawled backward. Carleton landed heavily on top of him. Out of the corner of his eye, Ryng saw the automobile burst upward in sections. The bomb must have been directly underneath it. The gas tanks on both vehicles blew, spewing flames in all directions.

The carnage spread across K Street. Bodies and parts of bodies littered the street and sidewalks, some cloaked in burning gasoline. For a hundred feet in every direction people had been knocked off their feet. The glass was blown out of every building within his sight. And as Ryng knew would happen, the deathly silence that follows such a blast was pierced by the hysterical screams of the injured and the pitter-patter of small, gruesome objects falling around them like raindrops.

In a moment, Ryng and Carleton were on their feet, ahead of Pratt and the other two. None had been close enough to be hurt by the blast.

As Hank Cobb approached the scene, he simply nodded, never looking to either side as he strolled nearer. The bomb was a big, sloppy one. The word must have gotten out that Admiral Pratt was the boss. More than likely it was set for a time when Pratt would be well on his way to Andrews. Instead, it reacted to the impact of the delivery van. Cobb looked at the bodies sprawled all over K Street. Time to get on with my own work , he thought. I’d better get my ass out of here before anyone else gets hurt .

While Pratt was en route to Naples, the Turkish offensive reached a stalemate. Counterattacks by the Greek air force in the western half of Turkey offset further strikes against Greek military bases. The sinking of two Turkish troop transports off Cape Sounion countered an invasion force assumed to be headed for Piraeus.

While the public was distracted by the Greco-Turkish war, the activation of twenty-two reserve divisions in the western sector of the Soviet Union neared completion, with fourteen of those already in transit to the west. Though these reserves remained approximately fifty percent short of combat supplies, control of truck and rail systems was assumed by the military, confirming an earlier CIA release that most, if not all, of the Warsaw Pact nations had been placed under martial law.

The movement of shock divisions toward the west continued, following a north-south orientation directed primarily for the Federal Republic of Germany via Poland, East Germany, and Czechoslovakia. In concert, there was also a push south from Hungary, Rumania, and Bulgaria toward the Mediterranean. Moscow confirmed major exercises in these areas, claiming they were previously announced, ostensibly to test her satellite countries under such an emergency. The UN Security Council requested permission to send observers, but were answered with silence from Moscow.