Ian Slater - WW III

“Got him!” shouted the gunner.

As the Medevac team were lifting the downed marine onto a stretcher, Freeman touched Brooklyn’s arm. “C’mon, son. Work to do.”

“Yes, sir.” But now the boy’s voice was cracked with emotion as one of the medics, seeing his colleague was stripping open an emergency field dressing, reached over and stopped him, then pulled the marine’s poncho over his face, the rain bouncing off it with a drumming sound.

“Let’s go,” said Freeman, leaping into the Humvee, a squad automatic weapon with him and grenade vest packs in his right hand.

He turned to the marine major in charge of holding the square. “Give us forty-five minutes, Major. We’re not back, you go ahead with the withdrawal.”

“We’ll stay as long as we can, sir.”

“You’ll stay forty-five minutes and get your ass out of here. Second Tomcat wing’ll have enough to do with those MiGs without baby-sitting us. That means I want choppers in the air at oh six thirty. You hear me?”

“Loud and clear, sir.”

The major’s biggest worry wasn’t whether the general would get back or not but how best to protect the Chinooks, scattered all around. So far the general’s plan was working well, despite the airport and the sporadic fire of some Home Guard and militia troops working their way up Sunji Street, the marines now in the process of blocking it off. While this was happening, the major saw that the men from Freeman’s infantry were pushing more of the Chinooks to the west end of the square between the big protective blocks of the Art Gallery on the square’s south side, the History Museum on the north, and the river directly behind them to the east. Meanwhile on the top floor of the six-storied Grand People’s Study House, marines with spotting scopes took up positions.

“What’s your name, son?” Freeman asked the Humvee’s marksman/squad leader next to him in the cabin.

“Brentwood, sir.”

“All right, Brentwood — we’re going to visit Mansudae Hall. Ever heard of it?”

“On the map, sir. Aboard the LPH when we were going over the-”

“Well, son, you’re going to see it up close. You ready?”

“Yes, sir,” said Brentwood.

The general knew he wasn’t. No one was, before their baptism of fire.

“So far,” Freeman had told Al Banks back at the square, “on the ground we’ve only had chicken-shit resistance.”

“I think that’s about to change,” Banks had cautioned.

“By God, it’s the curfew,” Freeman had proclaimed in a moment of revelation, standing in the pouring rain, arms akimbo. “Thought everyone was staying inside from fright.”

In the Hummer, Freeman could hardly breathe, so excited was he by the prospect — a vision of glory so powerful — heaven so clearly on his side with the curfew and the rain and the monsoon, together with his, Douglas Freeman’s, idea to attack when no one else would, that the general found it impossible to contain his exhilaration. “Hot damn!” He smacked the dash, the startled driver almost driving into the curb and having to hastily readjust his infrared goggles as they swung right at the Grand People’s Study House, rushing the four blocks to the Mansudae Assembly Hall.

In the ice-cold depths of the North Atlantic, eighty-three miles west of Scotland, the USS Roosevelt’s executive officer, Peter Zeldman, gave the skipper his wake-up call. “Captain. Message station coming up.”

“Okay, Pete. Be right there.” Robert Brentwood pressed the “stop” button on Johnny Cash’s “Don’t Take Your Guns To Town,” swung his feet off the bunk, and made his way over to the washbasin to wake himself fully, his eyes and throat dry as parchment. He made a mental note to tell the chief engineer to turn the switch up on the air/water content control. Brushing his teeth, his mirrored image looking better than he felt, he was struck by how the public face — the face of duty — so often and so convincingly hid the deepest fears of the inner shadows. He glanced at his watch. Three-twelve p.m. Back home — that other planet — his mom would most likely be having her morning coffee, his father at the New York Port Authority, pushing paper and moving ships, cutting corners where he could and sucking Tums where he couldn’t. And what about Lana? Had she and La Roche patched it up? For the life of him, he couldn’t think why a man would want to break with a beautiful girl like that. Maybe it wasn’t all La Roche’s fault. It took “two to tango,” as his mother never tired of saying. Anyway, hopefully, if the burst message did come in, he’d be in Holy Loch tied up within two to three hours and there’d be lots of mail for everyone. Maybe a letter from young David, though that was too much to hope for, knowing his younger brother’s “allergy” to writing anyone. Well, hell, thought Robert, replacing the toothbrush, you’re no letter writer yourself, pal. You ready, Brentwood? he asked himself. Ready. And willing?

No — but ready.

The moment he began the walk toward the control room, Brentwood felt every sailor he passed watching him, wondering. He nodded to most and stopped at the galley.

“What’s on, Cook?”

“Roast lamb and mint sauce, sir.”

“Gravy?”

“Yes, sir.”

“Trying to make me fat?”

“No, sir.”

“I’ll have to start training like Wilson.”

The cook grinned, hoping the skipper wouldn’t notice he wasn’t wearing his chef’s hat.

“Wilson’s down there now, sir.” He nodded back toward the missile bays. “Doing his laps.”

“Hope he’s wearing sneakers,” Brentwood said, half in jest, half seriously — the “on station” behavior code forbidding anything that would make a noise loud enough to be picked up by an enemy’s towed array.

“Good,” said Brentwood, about to move on. “And Cook?”

“Sir?”

“Get that hat on.”

“Yes, sir.”

Stepping into control, the sub still rigged for red, Brentwood could feel the tension.

“Depth?” he asked Zeldman.

“Five hundred, sir.”

“Very well. Take her to one hundred.”

“To one hundred,” confirmed the diving officer, standing behind the plane and trim operators, their half-wheel steering columns moving gently with hydraulic grace.

“Four fifty… three hundred… three fifty…”

Brentwood pressed the intercom for all sections, from torpedo room up forward through “Sherwood Forest,” the missile bays, to the reactor, to call in for status reports.

“Three hundred… one fifty… one hundred, sir.”

“Very well. Roll out VLF.”

“Roll VLF.”

The sub shifted slightly.

“Upwelling, sir,” commented the diving officer, noting the sudden change in salinity and water temperature.

“Stop VLF,” commanded Brentwood.

“Stop VLF.”

Brentwood watched the depth gauge, its needle moving slightly, up again, then down. The sub shifted a little more. Last thing he needed was an inversion layer, a sudden change in water density that could suck the sub down before enough ballast could be blown to regain neutral boyancy, driving the boat down, hitting the bottom at 150 miles per hour. The needle moved down again and back.

“Retract VLF.”

“Retracting, sir.”

Brentwood was now receiving status reports from all the sections. Everything A1. “Pete, let’s take her on a mile or so. Get her away from this upwelling nonsense.”

“Yes, sir.”

Robert Brentwood looked at the steering computer’s clock— at an easy twenty-five knots they should reach a new position in plus or minus four minutes, depending on local sea current/ salinity/temperature variations. It would mean running out the VLF a little faster and risking a little more noise for Roosevelt to hopefully clear the upwelling and still have time for a ten-minute wait — but this should be no problem.