‘I’ll have some help, and I don’t have to swim back, do I?’
‘I suppose not. Sure will be nice to get those guys out.
‘Yes, sir.’
CHAPTER 27
Insertion
Phase One of Operation BOXWOOD GREEN began just before dawn. The carrier USS Constellation reversed her southerly course at the transmission of a single code word. Two cruisers and six destroyers matched her turn to port, and the handles on nine different sets of engine-room enunciators were pushed down to the FULL setting. All of the various ship’s boilers were fully on line already, and as the warships heeled to starboard, they also started accelerating. The maneuver caught the Russian AGI crew by surprise. They’d expected Connie to turn the other way, into the wind to commence flight operations, but unknown to them the carrier was standing down this morning and racing northeast. The intelligence-gathering trawler also altered course, increasing power on her own in the vain hope of soon catching up with the carrier task force. That left Ogden with two Adams-class missile-destroyer escorts, a sensible precaution after what had so recently happened to USS Pueblo off the Korean coast.
Captain Franks watched the Russian ship disappear an hour later. Two more hours passed, just to be sure. At eight that morning a pair of AH-1 Huey Cobras completed their lonely overwater flight from the Marine air base at Danang, landing on Ogden’s ample flight deck. The Russians might have wondered about the presence of two attack helicopters on the ship which, their intelligence reports confidently told them, was on an electronic-intelligence mission not unlike their own. Maintenance men already aboard immediately wheeled the ‘snakes’ to a sheltered spot and began a complete maintenance check which would verify the condition of every component. Members of Ogden’s crew lit up their own machine shop, and skilled chief machinist’s mates offered everything they had to the new arrivals. They were still not briefed on the mission, but it was clear now that something most unusual indeed was under way. The time for questioning was over. Whatever the hell it was, every resource of their ship was made available even before officers troubled themselves to relay that order to their various divisions. Cobra gunships meant action, and every man aboard knew they were a hell of a lot closer to North Vietnam than South. Speculation was running wild, but not that wild. They had a spook team aboard, then Marines, now gunships, and more helicopters would land this afternoon. The Navy medical corpsmen aboard were told to open up the ship’s hospital spaces for new arrivals.
‘We’re going to raid the fuckers,’ a bosun’s mate third observed to his chief.
‘Don’t spread that one around,’ the twenty-eight-year veteran growled back.
‘Who the fuck am I gonna tell, Boats? Hey, man, I’m for it, okay?’
What is my Navy coming to? the veteran of Leyte Gulf asked himself.
‘You, you, you,’ the junior man called, pointing to some new seamen. ‘Let’s do a FOD walkdown.’ That started a detailed examination of the flight deck, searching for any object that might get sucked into an engine intake. He turned back to the bosun. ‘With your permission, Boats.’
‘Carry on.’ College boys, the senior chief thought, avoiding the draft.
‘And if I see anybody smoking out here, I’ll tear him a new asshole!’ the salty third-class told the new kids.
But the real action was in officers’ country.
‘A lot of routine stuff,’ the intelligence officer told his visitors.
‘We’ve been working on their phone systems lately,’ Podulski explained. ‘It makes them use radios more.’
‘Clever,’ Kelly noted. ‘Traffic from the objective?’
‘Some, and one last night was in Russian.’
‘That’s the indicator we want!’ the Admiral said at once: There was only one reason for a Russian to be at SENDER GREEN. ‘I hope we get that son of a bitch!’
‘Sir,’ Albie promised with a smile, ‘if he’s there, he’s got.’
Demeanors had changed again. Rested now, and close to the objective, thoughts turned away from abstract dread and back into focus on the hard facts of the matter. Confidence had returned – leavened with caution and concern, but they had trained for this. They were now thinking of the things that would go right.
The latest set of photos had come aboard, taken by an RA-5 Vigilante that had screamed low over no less than three SAM sites to cover its interest in a minor and secret place. Kelly lifted the blowups.
‘Still people in the towers.’
‘Guarding something,’ Albie agreed.
‘No changes I see,’ Kelly went on. ‘Only one car. No trucks… nothing much in the immediate area. Gentlemen, it looks pretty normal to me.’
‘Connie will hold position forty miles off seaward. The medics cross-deck today. The command team arrives tomorrow, and the next day -‘ Franks looked across the table.
‘I go swimming,’ Kelly said.
The film cassette sat, undeveloped, in a safe in the office of a section chief of the KGB’s Washington Station, in turn part of the Soviet Embassy, just a few blocks up 16th Street from the White House. Once the palatial home of George Mortimer Pullman – it had been purchased by the government of Nikolay II – it contained both the second-oldest elevator and the largest espionage operation in the city. The volume of material generated by over a hundred trained field officers meant that not all the information that came in through the door was processed locally; and Captain Yegorov was sufficiently junior that his section chief didn’t deem his information worthy of inspection. The cassette finally went into a small manila envelope which was sealed with wax, then found its way into the awkward canvas bag of a diplomatic courier who boarded a flight to Paris, flying first class courtesy of Air France. At Orly, eight hours later, the courier walked to catch an Aeroflot jet to Moscow, which developed into three and a half hours of pleasant conversation with a KGB security officer who was his official escort for this part of the journey. In addition to his official duties, the courier did quite well for himself by purchasing various consumer goods on his regular trips west. The current item of choice was pantyhose, two pairs of which went to the KGB escort.
Upon arriving in Moscow and walking past customs control, the waiting car took him into the city, where the first stop was not the Foreign Ministry, but KGB Headquarters at #2 Dzerzhinskiy Square. More than half the contents of the diplomatic pouch were handed over there, which included most of the flat pantyhose packages. Two more hours allowed the courier to find his family flat, a bottle of vodka, and some needed sleep.
The cassette landed on the desk of a KGB major. The identification chit told him which of his field force had originated it, and the desk officer filled out a form of his own, then called a subordinate to convey it to the photo lab for development. The lab, while large, was also quite busy today, and he’d have to wait a day, perhaps two, his lieutenant told him on returning. The Major nodded. Yegorov was a new though promising field officer, and was starting to develop an agent with interesting legislative connections, but it was expected that it would be a while before CASSIUS turned over anything of great importance.
Raymond Brown left the University of Pittsburgh Medical School struggling not to quiver with anger after their first visit to Dr Bryant. It had actually gone quite well. Doris had explained many of the events of the preceding three years with a forthright if brittle voice, and throughout he’d held her hand to lend support, both physical and moral. Raymond Brown actually blamed himself for everything that had happened to his daughter. If only he’d controlled his temper that Friday night so long before – but he hadn’t. It was done. He couldn’t change things. He’d been a different person then. Now he was older and wiser, and so he controlled his rage on the walk to the car. This process was about the future, not the past. The psychiatrist had been very clear about that. He was determined to follow her guidance on everything.
Father and daughter had dinner at a quiet family restaurant – he’d never learned to cook well – and talked about the neighborhood, which of Doris’s childhood friends were doing what, in a gentle exercise at catching up on things. Raymond kept his voice low, telling himself to smile a lot and let Doris do most of the talking. Every so often her voice would slow, and the hurt look would reappear. That was his cue to change the subject, to say something nice about her appearance, maybe relate a story from the shop. Most of all he had to be strong and steady for her. Over the ninety minutes of their first session with the doctor, he’d learned that the things he’d feared for three years had indeed come to pass, and somehow he knew that other things as yet unspoken were even worse. He would have to tap on undiscovered resources to keep his anger in, but his little girl needed him to be a – a rock, he told himself. A great big rock that she could hold on to, as solid as the hills on which his city was built. She needed other things, too. She needed to rediscover God. The doctor had agreed with him about it, and Ray Brown was going to take care of it, with the help of his pastor, he promised himself, staring into his little girl’s eyes.