Leaving the ship was hard, like abandoning a member of the family. He’d
seen the butcher’s bill that morning: thirty-seven dead out of a crew of 220.
He suppressed a shudder. He’d also seen Captain Strachan’s body when they
pulled it out of what was left of the bridge. Strachan had been a friend as
well as a commanding officer, and a man DuPont respected.
Looking beyond the cloven, fire-seared superstructure of the Hopkins,
DuPont studied the lines of other ships gathered in the Orkneys, ships with
proud names, and proud histories. Ark Royal, one of Britain’s three remaining
aircraft carriers, rose like a steel cliff at a pier beyond the American
frigate.
Scapa Flow, an important base for Britain’s fleet in World War II, had
become a major anchorage again, this time for ships of the Royal Navy that a
peace-minded British government was retiring. Dozens of ships were here, in
mothballs or in the process of being decommissioned. Great Britain’s
once-mighty Royal Navy had come down in the world since the days of the
Falkland Islands war. The far-left socialist government that had come to
power a few years before had gutted the fleet, sending many of its ships here.
From what DuPont had been able to gather, a new government had been elected,
but decisions to reactivate the Royal Navy were going to be some time in
coming. A nation’s foreign policy could not be reversed overnight.
“Might you be Commander DuPont?”
He turned. The speaker was white-haired and ramrod straight, a tall,
imposing man in dress blues. The bands and loops on his sleeve, the heavy
gold on cap and shoulderboards, proclaimed him to be an admiral of the Royal
Navy.
DuPont snapped to attention and saluted. “Excuse me, Admiral. I didn’t
hear you. I’m DuPont, yes, sir.”
“Admiral Montgomery Parker. They told me I might find you here. Sorry
if I startled you.”
“Not at all, sir.” DuPont was curious. Where was the usual retinue of
aides and junior officers? Parker was alone. A limousine with blue flags on
the front fenders was parked by the accessway to the jetty, a hundred yards
away.
“Hmmm. Saying good-bye to her?”
“I suppose I am, sir. It … seems a shame.”
“Know what you mean. When you’ve lost friends, shipmates … you can’t
just walk away.”
“Yes, sir.” Was Parker reading his mind?
“And I expect you’re thinking about the lads in the battle group off
Norway.”
“Yes, sir.”
“I’ve heard all about your action. And what you must have gone through
to get your ship and your men safely to port. An excellent job, Commander.
Very well done.”
“Thank you, Admiral. Uh, may I ask, sir, what is this all about?”
Parker gestured past the Hopkins, toward the massive silhouette of the
Ark Royal. “That one’s mine, you know. Her and her chicks. Ark Royal battle
group. Until NATO went down the tubes, the best damned ASW team in the
alliance. Still would be the best … but we’re a little short-handed just
now.” He was smiling.
“I’m not sure I know what you mean, sir.”
“The crew’s aboard. Most of them. But her captain’s short-handed.
Especially in some of the ET specialities. Radar, sonar, commo. And we need
some liaison officers to talk with the American battle group in the area.
Help if we could follow what they were bloody talking about, eh?”
DuPont still didn’t follow the man. “Yes, sir?”
“I have in mind putting my battle group to sea, young man. The sooner
the better. Unfortunately, we don’t have our full complement here. Scapa
Flow’s not a regular anchorage, you know. Just occasionally, for mothball
fleets, the odd war, and the like. A lot of our specialists were distributed
through the fleet.” The line of his mouth hardened. “They were going to
mothball the Ark, more fools they.”
DuPont was becoming uncomfortable. Admiral the man might be, but he was
making little sense.
“You know, you people in the colonies got a bit testy a few years back,”
the admiral continued. “Eighteen twelve, and all that. Remember?”
“I, ah, wasn’t around at the time, sir.”
“Impressment, man, impressment! You Yanks didn’t care for it much when