Ian Slater - Rage of Battle

Morin was asking Lana how well she knew Captain Alen. She was sitting, feeling too bulky and hot in the overheated room, and asked for permission to remove her parka. Bering, who had taken a seat to the right of the commander’s desk, sat with his arms draped nonchalantly about the back of the plastic molded chair, blue eyes unapologetically X-raying her newly revealed shape.

“I want you to understand, Lieutenant,” began Commander Morin, shifting his gaze to Bering, “both of you, that this meeting is strictly off the record.” It struck Lana then that Bering was really a regular naval officer — the unkempt beard and ruddy cheeks a front, along with the easy affability and apparently unconcerned air. But for what? Drugs on the base?

“Mr. Bering,” explained Morin, “is a longtime resident of Unalaska.”

“Oh—” said Lana, smiling. Waiting.

Morin looked down at a three-ring binder, paused for a moment. “How long did you know him, Lieutenant?”

Bering was making her feel undressed. “The pilot?” pressed Morin, irritated that he hadn’t the effect on her that Bering obviously did. “The Hercules that crashed.” Morin was looking up at her.

“Not long at all,” said Lana.

“He’d invited you to fly to Adak with him. Is that correct?”

“Yes, sir.”

“You didn’t go?”

What was Morin on about? Lana wondered. It was a dumb question. Of course she didn’t go — otherwise she’d be dead.

“Why was that? Records show you were off duty. You didn’t report in sick, did you?”

“No, sir, but I’d just received a wire from the War Department about my brother the night before the flight. He’d been reported missing in action. On the morning I was to go with Lieutenant Alen, I picked up a VOA broadcast about the situation in Europe and I decided to stay and listen.”

Morin nodded, his eyes back on the file, then up at her again. The sound of the electric clock on the wall behind him was a taint buzz, which Lana could now hear quite distinctly in the silence of the room.

“Yes,” said Morin. “I’m sorry.” He paused. “You ever see him drunk?”

Lana was nonplussed. “No — not that I—”

“I don’t mean in duty,” said the commander. “Socially?”

“No,” replied Lana. “I hardly knew him… He invited me up for the run to Adak, that’s all.”

“How about his copilot, then?”

“I didn’t know him at all, Commander.”

Morin was tapping a pencil on the desk, letting it slip through his fingers, reversing it, obviously in a quandary.

“I don’t think,” proffered Lana, “that he was the type to get drunk before a flight, sir, if that’s what you’re concerned about. Anyway, as far as I remember, the plane was hit by volcanic debris when Mount Vsevidof blew.”

“Yes,” said Morin, rolling the pencil back and forward between his hands. “That’s what we thought. We did have a four point six on the Richter — but that’s not unusual for this part of the world. Anyway, it doesn’t usually accompany an eruption. Weather boys tell me they’d expect something around seven point one for the volcanoes to blow their tops.” He paused, leveling the pencil at Bering. “This gentleman says he was in the area off Vsevidof that morning — how far out did you say?”

Lana liked Bering, so laid-back, his thumbs hooked in the pockets of his coveralls, legs outstretched as if he might be getting ready to take a nap. “ ‘Bout seven — ten miles,” he told the commander. “Halfway between Mount Vsevidof and Okmok Caldera.” He was smiling at Lana. “Next island west of us, miss. Caldera’s the ash lip of the old volcano-still steams a lot. Adds to the fog. But I never heard the noise, you see — I mean the noise of anything being thrown up-volcanic rocks. They go through the air with a kind of hissing noise. Lava starts to cool as it flies through the air and when it hits the sea. Once you’ve heard it — you never forget.”

“But,” cut in Morin, pressing into his left palm hard with the pencil’s eraser and looking straight at Lana, “he thinks he heard—”

“ Know I heard, Colonel,” said Bering, though he was still watching Lana.

“All right,” Morin corrected himself, “he heard another sound.”

“Well,” said Bering, “like I said, I saw the flash first. Then a booming sound a few seconds later.”

“He thinks,” said Morin, “that it was a missile.”

Now she told the commander she realized why he was so concerned — it looked as if one of their own aircraft in the fighter umbrella that constantly patrolled the Aleutian arc had accidentally shot down the Hercules, killing Alen, the copilot, engineer, and nurse Mary Reilley. The military called it “friendly fire,” but you ended up just as dead.

“No,” the commander corrected her. “I’ve done a thorough check of that possibility. No fighter cover over the area at that time.” He glanced up at the map of the Aleutian arc, where he’d ringed the wild, grass-topped basalt group generally known as the Islands of Four Mountains, which thrust out of the sea three hundred miles west of Unalaska’s Dutch Harbor.

“A Bogey?” suggested Lana, surprised at her ready use of the preflight lingo she’d picked up at the base.

The commander shook his head. “Nothing on our radar. Nothing at all.”

“But,” interjected Lana, “our radar at Shemya Island and Adak should have picked up anything coming our way. I mean—”

“Exactly,” said Morin, mildly irritated that she knew enough to ask the question. “Shemya’s phased radar and Adak Naval Station should have seen anything coming our way — at least half an hour warning. Even if they were flying at Mach 2.” The commander paused. “Which is why the Russians would like to take those two stations out — reduce our warning time.”

“Then how,” pressed Lana, “would a missile—”

“That’s why I’ve asked you here,” said Morin. “To check out Alen. If they’d goofed up, accidentally fired off a flare or whatever, it might have been what Mr. Bering believes—”

“It wasn’t a flare, Colonel. I’d bet old Sea Goose on that.” He smiled at Lana. “My trawler.”

“Oh.”

“It was going way too fast for a flare, Commander,” continued Bering. “I’ve seen enough of those from Search and Rescue to know the difference.” Without taking his hands out of his pockets, Bering indicated the map. “Looked to be coming up from the vicinity of Four Islands.”

Now Lana realized precisely what it was that the commander was worried about. If a missile had been fired at the Hercules from a submarine, then it most likely had advance notice of the aircraft’s destination and so its probable flight path. Lana was about to assure the commander that she certainly hadn’t told anyone, but—”I–I did mention it to Nurse Reilley when I found out I couldn’t go for the ride.”

“The nurse who went instead of you?” asked Morin.

“Yes. She took my place. But she would hardly have had time to tell anyone—”

“I’m not saying she did,” responded the commander. “But all it takes is for someone to send a millisecond burst signal to the sub. At least a dozen or so people on the base knew the plane was doing a supply run to Adak.”

“But wouldn’t we pick up a signal like that?” asked Lana.

“Yes, and I’ve checked all signals as well as fighter patrol times — and I’ve had the reports from Adak and Shemya cross-referenced on that day. Nothing. They don’t show any sub intercept.”

Lana thought he’d snap the pencil in half as he sought an explanation.

“I don’t think you’ve got a security leak,” said Bering. “Plane just happened to be there. Too much damn coincidence otherwise.”